


A Rose

by zealousprince



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F, F/M, Female Friendships, Transgender Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-25 23:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 39,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/958842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealousprince/pseuds/zealousprince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serendipity had resigned herself to an existence in the service of others until she met the one person in all of Kirkwall — maybe the world — who is just like her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> Two years in the writing and I am finally finished with this monstrosity of a fic. Huge thanks to [Cherie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SignCherie) for the many, many characterization and plot suggestions, and to Ivan for additional thoughtful criticism.
> 
> Though they aren't the central focus of the story, please be warned that this fic does contain discussions of transgender issues and physical/emotional dysphoria, as well as brief mentions of transphobia and cissexism. Also moderate violence throughout.

The first time Serendipity sees Natalia Hawke, she isn’t _him_ just yet.  Just Hawke.

The first time, Hawke isn’t the Champion of Kirkwall, or even a resident of Hightown.  She’s just a Lowtown stray, a hanger-on, a girl wearing a worn tunic and a worn smile that’s too tight at the edges, like she doesn’t know that wan cynicism went out of style in 5:30 Exalted.

Serendipity barely notices her at first, and frankly doesn’t care, because a familiar face just manifested at the doorway and Serendipity would really like this man to come back to her.  There’s been no one for her all day and she’s restless, annoyed.  She has savings, salvaged from the little Madame Lusine lets her keep, but her stipend won’t last her forever.  It’s been a bad week for a courtesan whose shoulders feel too sharp in a well-worn dress, whose hands feel too angular and rough, whose voice feels just too low, too scratchy to be really hers.

Serendipity watches the familiar man creep up to the madame.  His lips barely move as he tries for subtlety and whispers for Madame Lusine what he wants.  Madame Lusine’s expression shifts, just so; a two-sovereign deal, then.  Serendipity has a chance at last.  She leans back against the table behind her hips, positioning her feet precisely against the tile floor, canting her shoulders in just the right way.  She tosses the man a look tailored just for him as he begins to cross the floor.  He glances left and right, searching, nervous as a baby nug in broad daylight.  He hasn’t even taken off his intricately engraved gold wedding band.  A novice’s mistake, without a doubt.  Serendipity can ensnare him yet.  After all, he’d discovered a taste for her before.

All her posing and promise-laden glancing is to no avail, however, because the moment the man catches sight of Serendipity, his expression changes from apprehension to abject horror, and he quickly turns off in another direction, towards the Orlesian runaway with more bosoms than brains.  The girl winks and gestures to him, and grabs him by the arm as she artlessly drags him up the stairs.  Serendipity follows them with her gaze, her spine stiffening and ruining the seductive pose.  Orlesian Boobs glances back at her from the top of the stairs and grins quickly, giving her a repentant _better luck next time_ look, and although Serendipity knows that Boobs is too stupid to connive to steal her clients _and_ successfully hide it, she hates her with every fibre of her being anyway.

She’s about to settle for being furniture for the rest of the night when the worn-out street rat walks up, not looking at anyone’s face.  She looks nervous too, though not in the guilty-cheating way that Serendipity’s ex-customer did.  She seems more edgy and alert, fingers clenching rhythmically as she surveys the entire place, then glances back towards the lobby, where Sabina’s brat and the rest of his posse of whoresons confiscate the customers’ more obvious weapons.  There’s something of a man’s posture in her walk, and a city thug’s composure in her gaze.  A warrior, then.  Or at least, someone who fights a whole damn lot.

The girl’s eyes settle on Serendipity after a moment, and she stops in the middle of the floor, amid the bustle of patrons and prostitutes.  Serendipity levels her gaze with hers, almost forgetting to be inviting, but catches herself in time to offer a sultry smile and a cock of her hip.

It seems to be enough for the little street rat, because she makes the next few steps forward and stops again right in front of her.  The moment is quick, but strange; they inspect each other, the girl with a frown of contemplation, Serendipity with a swell of hope that feels dangerous and raw.

It’s time for her line: “Well, aren’t you adventurous?”

There’s more, but Serendipity sees the girl’s expression change (surprise? anxiety? her features are hard to read though her body isn’t), and instinct shuts her mouth before brothel training can carry this thing through.  She curses in her head, in elven, the only word she knows in elven, in fact, besides _vhenadahl_ and _shemlen_ , which even the humans know.

The girl doesn’t move away, however, but stands and gazes at Serendipity carefully, just long enough that Serendipity feels unnerved.  If she’s going to pass her by, then by Andraste’s flaming arse, pass and let her continue to cope with never being a good enough whore to make it out of here, and have a nice blighted day.

Serendipity is considering telling the street rat to shove off, but then her expression changes again and she smiles, easier than before, without the outdated sneer to her wind-chapped lips.

“Perhaps I am,” she says, resting her right hand on her hip.  “What is your name?”

“Serendipity,” Serendipity says.  She curtsies vaguely, feeling her knees crack; they don't usually have need of such formalities here, but something in the girl's tone and bearing seems to warrant it.  “Let’s get you some experience, sweetie.”

The girl’s smile twitches but stays on, which is more than Serendipity dared hope for, so she takes the street rat by the hand and guides her up the winding staircase, feeling the closeness and heat of her all the way up.  The girl glances around alertly once they’re closed into Serendipity’s chamber, taking stock of the dresser and the window, of the candles lit at strategic points around the room, then she makes a visible effort to relax.

She shucks her gloves first, placing them carefully on the top of the dresser, then begins to unbuckle her tunic as Serendipity watches from the bed.  The girl seems absorbed in her own clothing, as she expertly unlatches all the clasps and fastenings, and Serendipity realizes she’s forgetting her manners, and leaps up to help her.  A muscle in the girl’s arm jumps as Serendipity touches her, but she stays put and lets the courtesan do her work.  Serendipity lets her fingers linger against the fabric, loosening the straps with a slowness calculated to drive her senses wild with the teasing touches, and although the street rat’s body is getting tenser by the minute, her face is still unreadable.  She may as well be reading a journal on the societal benefits of Orzammar mushroom farming, and normally Serendipity would be insulted, if she didn't already know she was having an effect.  It’s enough to make her smirk a little, biting the corner of her mouth so that it doesn’t show too much.

“Something funny, Serendipity?”

Seems the street rat is observant too.  “Not at all, sweetie.  I’m just liking the feel of you.”

Serendipity deflects by teasing the thin leather armour from the girl’s torso, letting her knuckles brush with just the right amount of pressure against the shabby tunic beneath.  The girl turns her body towards her, swallowing as Serendipity casts the armour to the floor and reaches up to unbutton the tunic, starting at the throat and working her way down.  When it’s open all the way down, Serendipity dips her hands into the tunic and slides her fingers deftly against the girl’s sides, then down across her pelvic bones.  The street rat shivers, letting out a quick, voiceless breath.

The girl’s skin is uneven here, over her ribs and hips, where it should be soft; it’s ridged and raised in lines.  Scars?

The girl firmly takes hold of Serendipity’s wrists.  The pads of her fingers are callused and hard.

“The bed,” she says, and needs not say more.

Serendipity smiles her practised smile.

=====

Serendipity awakes very early every morning, even when her work doesn’t bring her to her bed alone until the few minutes before grey Kirkwall dawn.  She has an audience to prepare for, after all, or perhaps it’s just her own ego and her own selfish desires.  Whatever it is, it gets her out of bed just as the birds begin chirping on the scrolled eaves, before most of the other night-worn whores can even open their eyes under their faded lace-trimmed sleep masks.  There, in the rare silence that precedes every new day at the Blooming Rose, Serendipity makes herself anew with powdered foundation, hard sticks of pigment ground into blush, a tiny and expensive tub of Orlesian lip colour.  She makes herself the woman she knows herself to be.

Some days, just seeing herself in the stained mirror, her high elven cheekbones painted, her straightforward elven nose dusted, her jutting throat hidden with a velvet choker and her board-flat chest softened with a padded bodice, she can allow herself to feel a little better about herself.  Some days, she can’t, but she has accepted this too.

After her morning routine, Serendipity always heads to breakfast, far ahead of the others in her room who lie sprawled in their bunks, snoring and dreaming of their respective princes and princesses, guardswomen and royal knights in shining armour who will come one day to take them from this horrid city.  Serendipity doesn’t care a lick for any of them, or their elaborate fantasies of rescue and romance.  She may never have left Kirkwall, but she knows enough that such dreams have no significance to her.  No prince would ever want her.  For one thing, he’d tire of always having to send across the continent for shipments of her favourite, extremely costly cosmetics.

At this time of day, there isn’t usually anyone in the community dining hall, except for a few sputtering candles and maybe one of the brats snoozing under the table, cradled with a half-empty bottle of Antivan brandy instead of his mother.  One morning, though, a few days after Serendipity’s first encounter with Natalia Hawke, there is someone new sitting perched on a bench by the table, contentedly devouring a bowl of sticky porridge: Orlesian Boobs.

“Oh!  Serendeepeety!” Boobs calls happily.  “Good morning!  ‘Ow early you are.  Oh, but you must seet wiz me, _mon coeur_.  ‘Ere, ‘ere, beside me!  Don’t be shy!”

At least, that’s what it sounds like. That’s the very sound of Orlais right there, contained in the spirited and voluptuous bosom of one of the Rose’s most popular whores. Serendipity has only ever known her as “Boobs”; she’s never bothered to interact with her before now, let alone learn her name.

Serendipity snorts with derision from across the hall, but even she can’t think of any good reason to be so rude so early in the morning, so she fetches a bowl of porridge from the adjoining kitchen and joins Boobs at the end of the table.  She sits across the table from her, and Boobs smiles radiantly at her as she digs her spoon back into her porridge.

“Oh, Serendipity, I had hoped to speak to you sooner, but I have been so busy!  So many long nights that I can barely stand when it is over.  Ah, but you know this feeling, no?”

“Are you making fun of me?” Serendipity mutters into her porridge.

Boobs looks confused, a common look for her, if Serendipity’s memory banks serve.  “ _Hein?_   _Mais non_ , why would I do that?  I am only trying to...what is the word...commiserate with you.  We have both been here for so long.  We are almost like sisters, _non?_ ”

Serendipity says nothing to this, merely stabs her porridge with her utensil as though the gesture will make the stuff more edible.  May the Blight take that Lusine and her money grubbing ways, and may it take this filthy den too, where even a two-sovereign whore can’t get a decent meal.

“We aren’t sisters,” Serendipity says finally, after swallowing a mouthful of gluey porridge with difficulty.  “Besides, don’t you know?  I’m actually a man.”

Orlesian Boobs blinks at this, the hand holding her spoon frozen halfway on the path to her mouth, then she sets the spoon down.

“ _Mais non_ ,” she says again, very seriously.  “You are an elf, are you not?  Silly thing.  How can you tell me this and not even bother to hide those cute pointy ears?”

Serendipity holds Boobs’ gaze for a moment too long, wondering if she should feel angry or saddened by this new display of utter stupidity.  Orlais must surely not miss this one runaway.

They don’t say anything for the rest of the meal, but Boobs smiles at Serendipity before she goes, and sashays away while whistling a fashionable Orlesian chansonette.  There’s something to be said for her eternal good humour.

=====

The girl is still as worn-out as ever, the next time she comes in.  Madame Lusine barely glances at her, liking the look of her apparently genuine coin much better.  Her painted mouth quirks, though.  Two sovereigns.

Serendipity ponders that the street rat with the knife-wielding fingers could stand to keep the two gold coins for herself.  Maybe she could buy a new tunic, or pay a healer to remove the scars from her body.

The girl walks right up to Serendipity this time, with a measured stride that puts her at odds with the stumbling mercenaries and drunken lords.  She still appears completely out of her element yet carries herself far better than any of the men littering the floor.  Serendipity almost likes her.

Regardless of her current feelings, a job is a job.  “Hello again, sweetie.  Back for more?”

“It’s Hawke,” the girl says, inclining her head politely.  “I would much prefer you call me by name.”

Serendipity can’t help raising an eyebrow, but resists the cynical sneer threatening to overcome her mouth.  “Anything you like, serah Hawke.  Now, what can I do for you tonight?”

Hawke considers this question for a moment, like she’s not quite sure what she came here for.  The confused frustration of the first meeting is back for Serendipity, who still does not know quite what to make of the battle-worn girl who speaks like the most home-schooled of Hightown noblebrats, but who has obviously lived a life on the streets or worse.

Serendipity sees Hawke’s eyes flick up, once, towards the room where they went the first time.  Then Hawke smiles.  “I wouldn’t mind a bit more of the same.  Shall we?”

“We shall, serah Hawke.”

“Good girl,” Hawke says, with a shadow of a grin and a touch of a scoundrel, and Serendipity thinks, _she’s warming up to this, isn’t she?_  The little street rat learns fast, it seems.

Upstairs, Hawke is much more forward than the first time.  She divests herself of most of her gear herself and makes quick work of the back laces of Serendipity’s corset.  Serendipity isn’t afraid of being naked in front of this girl or anyone else; hell, it’s her livelihood, but that doesn’t mean she can’t still feel that old twinge of self-disgust as it’s happening.  Like so many things, it’s just something she’s gotten used to.

Hawke doesn’t tear off the corset or anything like that, but stops her fumbling and turns her attention to Serendipity’s face instead.  Serendipity meets her eyes challengingly, before she remembers she needs to be good.  “Anything in particular you would like, serah Hawke?”

“In particular?  No.”

“No?  Sweetie, surely you must have come here for something.”

A pause, too long to be innocent but too short to be analyzed, then Hawke says, “Coming for you isn’t enough?” with a quick grin in the side of her mouth, which Serendipity answers with a swift grin of her own before she busies herself with the swells of Hawke’s breasts under her tunic.

Hawke clings to her, breathing deeply against her neck.  Serendipity feels gooseflesh rise over her shoulders at the sensation, but it’s not entirely unpleasant.  There’s a twinge between her legs, something she hasn’t felt in sometime.  That isn't entirely unpleasant either.

“More,” Hawke says, lips warm against the side of Serendipity’s neck, and Serendipity allows her eyes to fall half-closed, and says, “Of course.”

=====

Afterwards, as Serendipity lounges on the bed looking calculatingly ravished, Hawke leaves her an extra ten silvers.

“A thank-you for your excellent service,” she tells her with another sideways smile, to which Serendipity replies, in a voice far lazier than she means to, “Anything for you, sweetie.”

Hawke says good evening and leaves.  Just like that, the room is empty again, and the only shivers across Serendipity’s skin are from the cold.

She lies back for a few minutes longer, revisiting the memory of Hawke’s callused fingers on her skin, then rises to dress and to relight the candles.  The ten silver coins gleam in the orange light, lovely as anything Serendipity has ever seen.

She stashes the money in a hidden pocket sewn into her corset, smirking with rare satisfaction.  Madame Lusine isn’t getting her greedy hands on this coin.  It’s hers by right.

Serendipity feels almost cheerful as she exits the bedroom to return to her post on the floor.  Just as she steps out, the adjacent door swings open, releasing a severely intoxicated nobleman stumbling to and fro and jabbering in barely intelligible Orlesian.

“ _Oui, oui, au revoir_ ,” replies a cheery voice from inside the room.  “ _Dites bonsoir à votre petite Dulci pour moi, oui, monsieur le comte?_ ”

“ _Rien que pour vous, ma belle, ma douce, ma...ma plus chère_ ,” the man slurs back, and turns to pick his way down the stairs, cursing good-naturedly all the way down.

Orlesian Boobs emerges from the room to wave goodbye to the comte, readjusting her sizeable assets in their cotton blouse with her free hand.  She sees Serendipity before she can have the chance to sneak away down the other staircase.

“Oh!   _Ma belle_ Serendipity!” she cries to be heard over the jangling of lutes and the wailing of drunken patrons.  “You look absolutely radiant, darling!  You had a good time with your _belle_ Fereldan, yes?”

“Fereldan?” Serendipity says before she can stop herself.

Boobs nods enthusiastically.  “Oh, yes, yes, the dark-haired Fereldan girl who works for Athenril.  Well, there is another one, _un apostat_ , I believe, but this one is far handsomer, _oui?_  How envious I am of you!”

“You have nothing to envy me,” Serendipity replies abruptly.  “She’s terrible at conversation and even more terrible in bed.”

At this uncharacteristic outburst, Boobs can’t even have the grace to look aghast for the required fifteen seconds before she bursts into exquisite peals of laughter.  Fellow whores coming from their respective rooms are staring at them both, wondering how the sourest of their elven sisters managed to make the Orlesian beauty laugh so hard.

Serendipity currently hates everyone.

Well, maybe not everyone, she thinks as she turns on her heel and stalks down the stairs.  She can feel the ten silvers in her corset, pressing warmly against her ribs.  It’s enough to carry her through the night, even with the echo of Boobs’ mirth in her ears.

=====

Hawke comes in a third time, such a time later that Serendipity had almost let the memory of her fade away along with all the rest.  She stands out to Serendipity the moment she appears, however, which speaks lamentably of her own interest.  Andraste’s perky tits, don’t let this get out of hand, Serin.

Hawke has barely stepped away from Madame Lusine when she catches Serendipity’s eye and smiles widely.  She quick-steps through the evening crowd, somehow dodging one of the brats hauling an over-laden tray of mead, and an inebriated lutist who would be better off pawning his instrument away.  Serendipity waits for her, casting her gaze around importantly as though she has better things to do than attend to a stray.

“Good evening, Serendipity,” Hawke says upon approach.  “You look quite lovely tonight.  That basque is new, I believe?”

Observant _and_ charming.  Serendipity’s luck may finally be seeing a change.  “It is, serah Hawke.  Does it please you?”

“Not as much as what is underneath.”

“My, my, sweetie.  You’ve gotten bolder, haven’t you?  Who _have_ you been practicing on these days?”

“No one but you,” Hawke says, even going so far as bowing a little at the waist.  Good grief.  “Would you be so kind as to keep me company tonight?  I have a little something to celebrate and I wouldn’t want you to miss it.”

Serendipity raises an eyebrow but only smiles in acquiesce, and follows as Hawke grabs her by the hand and draws her upstairs.  Some of the other girls are staring at Serendipity as she goes, probably wondering what she has done to earn the attentions of the sweet-talking roguish girl in leather plates, and Serendipity can’t help but feel a little satisfied.  She had already seen the interested glances that several of the other whores had given her client in the lobby.  Eat your hearts out, girls, this one’s mine.

Up in the room, Hawke bids Serendipity to sit on the bed and turns her back for a moment, her movements quick and incautious in her excitement.  When she turns back again, she’s taken a bottle of champagne out of her pack and is smiling widely, the candlelight glinting in her hazel eyes.  Serendipity rises to fetch two champagne flutes from a nearby cabinet.  Hawke fills Serendipity’s glass first, then places the bottle down on top of the dresser and joins her on the bed with her own.

“So what are we celebrating, serah Hawke?”  Serendipity asks, tipping her chin down craftily to regard Hawke from under her fake lashes.

Hawke grins, almost to the point of ecstasy.  “My freedom, Serendipity.  A year ago on this very night, I was sold into servitude by my own blighted uncle, but now I am my own man again.”

Interesting.“Is that so?  Congratulations, sweetie.”

“Thank you.”

Hawke moves closer, sliding across the heavy coverlet without looking away from Serendipity’s face.  Inexplicably, Serendipity feels a little unnerved by this closeness.  They’ve been very close before, on several occasions, but this feels new, and Serendipity isn’t sure she likes it.

“I suppose it’s a fault of character that I couldn’t help thinking of you, tonight,” Hawke murmurs, never glancing away.  “Hah.  Is that strange?”

“Is what strange, sweetie?”

“That I would rather spend this night with an interesting courtesan than with my poor family in Lowtown.”

“If they were so poor, you wouldn’t be spending the two sovereigns on me right now.”

Hawke laughs quietly and withdraws just a bit, the champagne flute grasped carefully with her callused fingertips.

“You have a lot of faith in me, my dear.  How do you know I’m not keeping all the money I earn for myself?”

Serendipity levels with Hawke for a moment, and decides to take the honest approach.  “From my observations, serah Hawke, you don’t seem the type.”

“Indeed?” Hawke’s smile turns wicked at the edges.  “So you have been observing me, then?”

“Not to wound your delicate ego, sweetie, but I observe everyone.”

“Is that so?  Are you secretly working for the Coterie then?  I’ve heard they have undercover informants even in the Rose.”

Serendipity snorts at this, a very undignified sound she can’t contain.  “Hardly.  It’s only to pass the time, serah.”

She expects another clever retort from Hawke, but the girl only smiles and says, “Interesting” before lifting her champagne.

“To freedom,” Hawke says in a serious voice, though her mouth twitches at one corner.  “May we all find it in one way or another.”

“To impossible dreams, then,” Serendipity replies, but taps her glass against Hawke’s all the same.

=====

“I have a venture in mind,” Hawke tells her before she goes, on that celebratory night.  “One I may not return from, unfortunately.”

“I guess I’ll find out if you do.”

It’s the right thing to say.  Hawke smiles and kisses Serendipity gently, on her neck right under her ear, before she steps out into the night.  It’s a maddeningly chaste gesture after the tumble they’ve just had, Serendipity thinks, before she frowns and banishes the thought.

Hawke tips her twenty silvers pieces after that night, leaving them on the carved mahogany side table for Serendipity to discover later, after awakening with a start from an unintentional nap.  Serendipity stares at the coins for some time, counting them over and over again before stowing them away in the hidden pocket of her new basque.  A few more silvers and she might buy a pendant to match the dipping collar of the dress, a prospect which makes her smile, alone in the semi-dark.

Hawke invades her idle thoughts for the next few days, even while Serendipity services the repressed wife of a minor lord one night, and a city guardsman who drinks more than he patrols the next.  Serendipity is furious with herself for letting her mind carry on like this, visualizing the steady lines of Hawke’s Fereldan features in another woman’s face, or recalling the exact feel of her hardened finger pads on her bare skin.  During off-hours in the brothel, one always hears whispers of customers falling for their favourite whores, and in rarer instances, of courtesans falling for their most beloved regulars.  It was something that was exploited and ridiculed, here at the Rose and anywhere else, not celebrated, and certainly not encouraged.  Madame Lusine herself was said to have been one of those lovelorn prostitutes, long ago, and look what’s become of her.  So the gossip goes, in any case.

 _Well, I’m not in love_ , Serendipity thinks one time as she snuffs the candles in the room and steps out into a darkened, nearly deserted hall.   _So that’s the end of that, I suppose_.

Still, she thinks of Hawke again that night as she acutely feels the bump Hawke’s coins make in her thin mattress.  She’s been lying awake like this a lot lately, face and hair scrubbed clean, body heavy with weary resentment.  At times like these, there’s nothing to do but listen to the others breathing from all corners of the room, and try not to imagine Hawke’s wiry body pressing against hers.  Orlesian Boobs is clearly audible from the top bunk directly across from Serendipity’s – ridiculous how even her snores seem to possess an accent – and Serendipity usually falls asleep listening to her, the only person in this entire Maker-forsaken establishment who will say more than two words to her.

 


	2. Act II

The next day is Serendipity’s and Boobs’ day off.  Boobs was particularly excited the evening before, as demonstrated by the way in which she had talked Serendipity’s ear off in the emptying common room about the next afternoon’s Market Day in Hightown.  In the style of all the Orlesian floozies in Thedas, Boobs loves shopping, and as late has become fiercely determined to make Serendipity love it too.

This is how Serendipity finds herself in a crowded Hightown street at the height of noon, sweating in her only man’s tunic and her too-long hair, cursing the Creators she barely believes in for creating crowds.  She hates being out without her makeup and her wear-softened dress with the stiff corset, but even she will make this concession if it means being able to walk around being stared at like she's a fifty silver whore.  But Andraste’s ass, she feels naked and angry all the same, and hates Boobs for looking so fresh and in her element.  Boobs is characteristically oblivious, latched onto Serendipity’s arm and careening them both between stalls with reckless shopper’s abandon.

There are trinkets and silks and clothes and jewels, in a variety such that Serendipity has never seen, even in all her years of being employed in Hightown.  She lingers at a stone merchant’s stall, gazing with longing at the sparkling cut stones as around her, as the wealthy crowd surges and shouts, even more obnoxious than a Feastday crowd at the Rose.  She doesn’t want to leave just yet, though, even with a headache pushing between her eyes; the pretty topazes and sapphires draw her in.  Maybe she’s part dwarf, Maker forbid.

“Five sovereigns for the citrine there, servant,” the merchant says, indicating a tiny yellow stone that glints like a cat’s eye.  “Highest quality stone for that low a price, I assure you.  An excellent gift for the master’s wife!”

Serendipity smirks at the entire display, then leans down as though to inspect the citrine.  The tiny rock is worth more than her even on a good night.

“Serendipity!” Boobs calls, suddenly manifesting at her elbow.  “Oh, _par le Créateur_ , I thought I had lost you!  What are you looking at?”

“Nothing much,” Serendipity mutters, already turning away.  “A bauble.”

She strides away, leaving a confused Boobs and an irate merchant with his stones.  She’s tired of this place and wants to go home, even though home is now a whorehouse for reasons she’ll need to take up with the Maker himself, once one of her customers finally gives her a flesh-eating disease and finishes her off.

Serendipity is already leaving the bustling, noisy square behind when Boobs catches up to her.

“That was _très_ rude, _mon coeur_ ,” she says, somehow managing to sound both chastising and cheerful.  “I know that many women express desire through anger, but there are limits, _non?_ ”

“And what would you know about desire?” Serendipity snaps.  “ _You_ have everything you could ever want.”

For some reason, Boobs thinks for a second, then nods.  “That is mostly true.  I am lucky, I suppose.  Now, stop walking and close your eyes.”

“What?”

“Just do it, _mon coeur_.  Close your eyes and give me your hand.”

It sounds suspiciously like something a particularly strange client once told her, but this is just Boobs so Serendipity does as she says.  As she stares at the glowing red light in the backs of her eyelids, Boobs giggles and deposits something small and light in her outstretched hand, closes her fingers around it, then says, “Now open your eyes.”

Serendipity does, and turns over a palm-sized velvet box with her fingertips.  She throws Boobs a suspicious look, but she merely clasps her hands before her, beaming and happy as a naïve young farm girl.

“Open it!”

She does.  Inside, nestled in more velvet, is a minuscule yellow stone, faceted and beautiful in the sunlight.

“The citrine,” Boobs says happily, as though the thing requires an introduction.  “The merchant felt quite insulted by your assessment of his wares, so I decided to...how do I say it...hit two birds with one precious stone.”

Serendipity is still staring at the stupid rock, utterly dumbfounded.

“They’ll think I stole it,” she says in disbelief.  “It’s too expensive.”

Boobs only smiles wider.  “I told him you were my servant, just newly hired and untrained.  I asked that he forgive you.  He could not very well say no after this sale, could he?”

And she erupts into more of that damnable laughter, obviously pleased with herself.  Serendipity can only gape.

When Orlesian Boobs sobers and accepts Serendipity’s awkward thanks, they walk slowly back to the Rose together, in the opposite direction of the incoming crowd.  Boobs keeps an arm hooked amicably around Serendipity’s waist the whole way, despite her protests, and doesn’t seem to care who stares.

=====

Serendipity hasn’t the faintest idea what to do with the citrine now that she has it, but that doesn’t stop her from gazing at it every night, in the faint glow of the turned-down lamps in the common sleeping area.  She wishes she could look at it again in full sunlight, or at least in the softer light of the candlelit upstairs rooms, but she doesn’t dare take the little velvet box out of its hiding place during the day.  Someone might see and steal it for themselves, or worse, show it to Madame Lusine, who would then only reclaim it for some non-existent prostitute’s tax. And Serendipity would much rather go with the lecherous old poor man at the bar than see the citrine sold, or hanging at Lusine's wrinkled, papery throat.

So she guards the stone like she imagines a dragon guards its treasure, and weeks pass.

It’s midsummer now, a time of increased revelry and debauchery in Hightown.  Food and wine flow more freely in the upper city than ever, while the elves in the alienage starve and the refugees in Darktown rot and the Qunari at the docks cross their arms and fume.  Everything is as usual.

Serendipity is returning from a rowdy young lord’s coming-of-age party in the dead of night, along with five other courtesans, including, of course, the ever-present Boobs, who happens to be a favourite of the host.  The lord had invited them all specially for the night’s festivities, obviously well-acquainted with the Rose’s employees.  Serendipity has just spent hours pleasuring one of the lord’s boorish friends, and longs to soak in a tub and cleanse herself of this new indignity.  She walks in silence, staring straight ahead, slightly apart from the others as they step unconcernedly across the moonlit square, still singing and laughing and reeling with drink.

Serendipity wants to be drunk too.  She abstained out of necessity earlier after accurately predicting her patron’s unruly conduct, but now she regrets the decision.  She concentrates instead on the feel of the cold grey stones on the soles of her feet.  She almost wishes Boobs would turn around and talk to her, but she’s drunk too and all the more Orlesian for it as she belts nonsense nursery rhymes into the sultry night, both arms looped around the shoulders of another fellow whore.

Serendipity is sober but not particularly alert, as she is too busy sulking, and thus she sees the darker shadow among shadows too late.  She makes a horrible choking sound as the crook of someone’s elbow locks around her throat and pulls back.  Something silver-quick flashes before her eyes and stops right in front of her face.

“Hello there, my pretty,” a raspy male voice drawls in her ear.  “Oh, scratch that.  You’re quite an ugly whore, aren’t you?  Poor thing.  As if it ain’t hard enough for you wenches to earn a living even with the good Maker’s blessing!  Hah!”

And he slides the flat of his knife down against her padded bosom, and Serendipity wants to thrash and fight but doesn’t dare, not with the blade so close to her.  She’s paralyzed with fear, trembling and hating herself completely for her weakness.  Out of her field of vision, Boobs is screaming and there are sounds of a struggle as the other courtesans are assaulted as well.

“ _Vauriens!  Salauds!  Putains de voleurs, pervers!  Le Créateur va vous foutre dans un trou avec des milliers de putes foutus de syphylis et vous aller mourir!_ _Mourir!_ ”

“Oi, shut that bitch up, will you!” the one holding Serendipity snaps.  “Can’t have her attracting the guard!”

There’s a loud thump and Boobs’ voice cuts off abruptly.  The men around them laugh over the sound of her body crumpling to the ground, and Serendipity can’t see any of it but she’s bloody _furious_ now and her own safety be damned.  She surges backwards as hard as she can and is rewarded when the back of her head strikes the bandit soundly on the nose.  He swears loudly and loosens his hold and drops his knife with the shock, and Serendipity exploits every bit of that mistake, twisting in his grip and shoving him back against a stone column.  The knife blade glints at her feet and without thinking she picks it up, holding the handle in both hands with the blade end pointed towards the rest of the gang.  She’s always been useless with a knife, ever since her days in the alienage, but she has no hope of standing up to these men in unarmed combat.  She’s no Dalish warrior, but what she lacks in training she’ll make up for in desperation and rage.

“Fucking _shit_ ,” the man behind Serendipity screams in a head-cold voice.  “Don’t just stand there, you bleeding louts, _kill her!_ ”

The men come to their senses and advance upon Serendipity with their blades drawn, and if Serendipity were the religious type she would send up a prayer right now, but as it stands all she does is plant her feet and ready the knife.  One of the female courtesans is whimpering, and Boobs lies motionless on the stone floor.  Serendipity wishes she wasn’t so mean to her.  With a snarl, the closest man to her leaps forward, blades flashing–

–and a bolt lodges itself firmly in the side of his neck.

The dying man hasn’t even fallen yet when a slim figure darts lighting-fast towards the next bandit.  With a flash of twin blades this one’s throat bursts in a criss-cross of blood, but the singing blades have already moved on and slice across the chest of a third man.  Another two bolts are loosed into the fray as the sound of a tremendous impact cuts in, with the fearful squealing of the Blooming Rose whores as a counterpoint.  Then the square is alight with lightning shooting inexplicably from the stone stairs to their left, along with the nonsensical cry of “ _I’ll show you why mages are feared!_ ” and the repeated impacting noises of metal on stone and flesh.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it is over.  Serendipity counts six, seven, eight bodies lying in varying degrees of dead on the ground, and in the centre of it all, a well-known figure rising to its full height from a stealthy crouch.

“Hawk–”

“ _Fucking bitch!_ ” a man wheezes behind her.  “Bloody well _kill you–!_ ”

Serendipity doesn’t give him the chance.  She swerves and brings the knife around in her two-handed grip and slices the bandit leader right across the throat. He gurgles, and tries to curse again, but his voice has leaked out with all the blood.

He falls flat on his face, twitches for a moment, then as the blood begins to pool under  him, ceases to move.

The knife falls from Serendipity’s hands and lands on the stone with a ringing clatter.

“Everyone all right?” a familiar voice calls in a familiar tone.

“I’m all right.”

“Everything good here.”

“I am fine.”

“A sound-off?” the first voice continues.  “You lot are more organized than I thought.”

“After following you into the farthest blighted reaches of the Deep Roads?  We’d have to be,” someone else replies pointedly.

That person steps closer and a staff end flickers on to illuminate the scene.  A disheveled man in a shabby coat peers into their faces, looking deeply concerned.

“Are you all right?” he asks.  “Is anyone hurt?  I’m a healer–”

“You’re an apostate!” one of the courtesans says in a stage whisper, as the others huddle around her in agreement.

The apostate sighs.  “I prefer ‘healer’, really.  Or ‘saviour of wandering prostitutes’.  I’d like that title much better.”

“Now don’t you go taking all the credit, Blondie,” someone else butts in.  It’s a dwarf wielding a monstrous crossbow nearly his size.  He shoulders the thing and grins up at Serendipity with approval.  “Nice cut.  You really held your own back there, huh?”

Serendipity snaps back to attention at his voice and casts her gaze around the dimly lit square.  There, just at the edge of the healer’s light: Boobs, still on the ground, a thick rivulet of blood standing out ruby red on her alabaster forehead.  Serendipity runs over to her before she can even think of stopping herself.

“My friend,” she tells the healer frantically, falling to her knees by Boobs’ side.  “They hit her, to shut her up.  Andraste’s sore-infested ass, I think she’s–”

“She’s alive,” the healer assures her.  He crouches on Boobs’ other side and sets down his staff to free his hands.  Then he begins to emanate a cool blue light from his fingertips to his shoulders, and gets to work doing whatever a healer does with all that glow.

A hand lands gently on Serendipity’s shoulder.  She whips aggressively back, and meets their saviour’s familiar hazel eyes.

“Serendipity,” Hawke murmurs.  “Are you hurt?”

“Hawke,” Serendipity returns.  Her voice is hard though she doesn’t mean it to be.  “Where did you come from?”

Hawke shrugs, smiling faintly.  “The shadows, same as always.  You’re all safe now, don’t worry.”

“Who’s worried?”

Serendipity shakes off Hawke’s hand and turns back to her friend.  The blue light is just fading from the healer’s skin.  He sits back on his heels and sighs again, looking tired and probably in need of a couple of hours at the Rose himself.

He looks across at Serendipity and puts on a reassuring smile.  “She’ll be fine.  They knocked her pretty hard but I’ve repaired the damage, so she’ll be all right after a day or two’s rest.  Now, does anyone else need healing?”

Serendipity peers down at Boobs in the semi-darkness.  There’s drying blood on her forehead but the cut underneath has magically healed over.  Serendipity breathes a sigh of relief.

“We have to get back now, or the madame will think we’ve run off,” she declares, once everyone else’s minor cuts and bruises have been healed by the apostate’s glowing fingertips.  She doesn’t like playing the leader of her motley crew of half-drunk whores but it’s necessary, at least until they reach the warm welcoming glow of the Red Lantern district.

Behind her, Hawke says, “We’ll accompany you.  Or I will.  The rest of you can go if you’re weary.”

“And leave you alone with a group of defenceless courtesans to be preyed upon anew?” the fourth party member says in a dark voice.  When he steps into the circle of light cast by the healer’s staff, the other courtesans all recoil as one.

This one’s an elf, dark-skinned as a Rivaini and adorned with unusual white _vallaslin_.  He’s hefting an enormous sword that he shouldn’t be able to lift with his slender frame, let alone with such ease.  He’s also glowering at the lot of them, like being attacked by scoundrels was their own blighted fault.  Serendipity instantly dislikes him.

“We’re hardly defenceless, _elvhen’alas_ ,” Serendipity bites out, using one of the few elven words in her vocabulary, which is of course an insult.  “Even those of us not born to the Dalish can fend for ourselves.”

She’s inordinately pleased when he bristles visibly.  The dwarf says, “Oh boy.”

“I am no friend of the Dalish, _whore_ ,” the elf retorts with a snarl.  “And what have you as defence?  You?  You were fortunate the man was so disoriented, else he would have slit your throat before you could even turn–”

“That’s enough,” Hawke cuts in.  “Fenris, you’re free to go if this bothers you so much.”

“Do you mock me, Hawke?” the elf named Fenris says.  “I’ll stay.”

 

 

”Aww, you wouldn’t stay for _me_ ,” the dwarf pipes up.

The elf only snorts and turns away and begins to walk in the direction of the Red Lantern district.  The other courtesans immediately scramble to their feet to follow.

“I guess that’s settled, then,” the healer says with gloomy charm.

He and the only male courtesan in their midst support a groggy half-conscious Boobs between them, and the group sets off.  None of Serendipity’s fellows speaks the whole way, although they do glance back at her from time to time, with strange, questioning looks in their eyes.

Hawke is fading in and out of the shadows pooling at every corner, scouting the way forward while the dwarf guards their rear.  Serendipity can’t track her the entire time, try as she might.  Surely even the Dalish aren’t as skillful as this street rat turned assassin.

The telltale reddish glow of their destination peeks out from behind the next corner.  Serendipity hears the healer grunt, “Almost there, miss.  Chin up,” as he pants with the effort of supporting Boobs’ substantially top-heavy weight, somehow not noticing that the male courtesan isn’t shouldering all of his allotted 50% of the burden.

They’ve reached the entrance of the deserted flagstone courtyard when Hawke materializes by Serendipity’s side, silent as a ghost.  Or perhaps a falcon, Serendipity reflects with unusual poetry, because of those eyes.

Serendipity doesn’t let herself meet Hawke’s eyes, but Hawke speaks anyway.

“Serendipity.  Are you well?”

“I’m not hurt, serah Hawke,” Serendipity replies severely.

She’s by no means soft by nature, but the encounter has frazzled her, and the sudden reappearance of Hawke after half a summer’s absence has only exacerbated her condition.  She just wants to be left alone to bathe and sleep, yet Hawke insists, “I mean...have you been well?  I’ve not been in Kirkwall for some time...”

“I get along just fine without you,” Serendipity snaps.

Serendipity is fully aware of how she sounds right now, and expects that Hawke does too, but Hawke doesn’t comment on her tone.  She’s above such petty admonitions.

“Is that so?  That’s good, then.”

Serendipity glances aside and accidentally catches Hawke’s eye.  The street rat’s watching her carefully, in a way that no one has ever looked at her before, and Serendipity has to look away.

“The life of a courtesan is hardly a changing one, serah Hawke,” Serendipity says in a softer voice.

“Especially in Kirkwall, I’d imagine,” Hawke agrees.

There’s something new to her voice, a depth of sadness that she did not possess before.  It makes Serendipity want to offer her a drink, but that just may be habit and her brothel training at work.

They’re halfway across the courtyard and once it becomes clear the path is deserted, the other courtesans dash forward to crowd into the Rose’s front door.  Only Boobs and Serendipity remain now, surrounded by a rogue, a dwarf, an elf. It seems a little like the opening line to a joke.

The healer is struggling under the weight of his charge, so Serendipity steps up to take his place.  Boobs leans heavily against her shoulder, but she’s standing, and even murmurs something that sounds like “ _Finian, je t’adore_ ” before lapsing back into dazed silence.

“I thank you and your companions, serah Hawke, for your aid tonight,” Serendipity says in her most formal voice.  “I have no coin to reward you with, but perhaps Madame Lusine should know of your exploits tonight, and recognize that the safety of her property is entirely due to you.”

That witchy whore, in debt.  It’s almost laughable to imagine, yet it would explain why she’s so tight with her coin.

The healer stretches, wincing when his back cracks audibly.  “If it’s all the same to you, Hawke, I would rather not go in there.  Again.  Ever.  If you catch my meaning.”

“I catch it,” Hawke says with a half-grin that suits her far more than the sad voice.  “It’s quite all right, Serendipity.  Your thanks and safety are reward enough for my services.”

“Since when?” the dwarf mutters.

“And here I thought I would be the one doing the servicing,” Serendipity shoots back, not missing a beat despite the present company and the overbearing weight of one wounded prostitute.

To everyone’s surprise, it’s the glowering elf, Fenris, who speaks up next, and when he does it’s with a feral sound like a growl.  “Hawke would never stoop so low as to consort with vermin like you.”

“Fenris,” Hawke says sharply.

“Vermin?” Serendipity replies, wickedly sweet. “Darling, last I checked, this was the cleanest place in Kirkwall.”

“ _Filth_ ,” Fenris spits.  “Good _night_.”

He stalks away into the night, up towards the Hightown estates, though what business a city elf with heavy weapons training has there, Serendipity wouldn’t know.  His companions let him go without a word.

“Calling it a night, I guess,” the dwarf says finally, into the tense silence.

“It’s practically morning,” the healer grumbles.

“Blondie, you’ll make a hell of a world-changer if you can’t even pull one little all-nighter.”

“Excuse me, Varric, but I’ve been known to be able to stay on my feet for days on end.   _In the Deep Roads._ As you _know_.”

“Oh, go bother a templar.”

“I think my friends are all tired,” Hawke interrupts with a fond, weary smile.  “And I trust you are as well.  We shall take leave of you now.”

Her body is tensed as though she wants to do anything but leave, but both she and Serendipity know she must.  This is no place for her.  Perhaps it never was.

“Good night, then, serah Hawke,” Serendipity says in a low voice.  “And thank you.”

Hawke acquiesces the thanks with a slight bow and an aborted arm movement towards her, disguised in the dandiness of the bow and therefore unnoticed by anyone but Serendipity.

Without further ceremony, Hawke turns to go, followed by her two remaining companions.  Serendipity edges Boobs towards the door left slightly ajar by the excited Rose whores.  She doesn’t look back, but she hears her saviours tramping down the stairs to Lowtown, and can just distinguish the dwarf asking, “So, how do you know him?”

=====

It’s so late that everyone but the most dead drunk of patrons has stumbled home.  A single candle burns low in an alcove in the lobby, and Serendipity manoeuvres Boobs towards the sleeping area by its faint orange glow.

Everyone is asleep and breathing gently in there.  Serendipity’s strength is flagging at last, so she has just enough time to deposit Boobs in a vacant lower bunk before collapsing herself on the floor by the bed, panting hard, hair in disarray.

Sprawled out on the bunk, Boobs stirs and opens her eyes slowly.  She brings a hand up to her head and presses the palm carefully against her forehead, where there is a crust of dried blood but otherwise no damage.  The healer seems to have done his work well.

“Serendipity?” Boobs whispers, still sounding dazed.  “Where...where is this?”

“The Rose.  More specifically Uldride’s bunk,” Serendipity whispers back.  She looks left to the farthest end of the large room.  “She’s in Danika’s.  Amazing how the people here can still bother to fuck amongst themselves after an entire work day.”

Boobs begins something that sounds like her usual giggle, but stops and winces instead.  “ _Ouille_.  That hurt.”

“They knocked you out to keep you quiet, which you should have done anyway, damn fool.  What in the name of Andraste’s perky tits were you thinking?”

“Saving all of you,” Boobs says faintly, sounding and looking very much like an admonished child.  “You...you are all I have.  You, th-the others.  We...we are like sisters...”

Serendipity quickly reaches out to stroke Boobs’ yellow hair, trying not to panic about the fact that she looks like she’s about to cry.  Awkwardly, she says, “Yes, yes, sisters, I know.  Now don’t cry, let’s just...”

“Who was it who got us away?  W-Was it you?”

“I, uh, tried,” Serendipity says lamely.  “But it was Hawke and her friends who did all the fighting.”

She thinks briefly back to the man she killed with one horizontal slice, feels suddenly sick, and pushes the thought from her mind.

“Hawke?” Boobs hiccups, and because of her accent thickened with distress, it sounds like ‘’Awke’. “Oh, your _belle_ Fereldan!”

“She’s not _mine_.”

Boobs’ eyes have gone wide despite the tears swimming in them.  She breaks into a sudden smile and grabs at Serendipity’s hands.

“So that is it!  She jumped in just in time to save you?  How _romantique!_ ”

“It really isn’t.”

“But it is!  Ah, to be loved by such a woman!”

Serendipity shakes both her trapped hands crossly.  “She doesn’t _love_ me, you dolt.  It was only coincidence.”

“Mm, _oui, oui_ , whatever your say, _mon coeur_.”

“You don’t get to ‘ _oui, oui’_ me while you’re like this.  Go to sleep.  The healer fixed you up but he said you needed to rest.”

“Serendipi–”

“No.  Shut up.  Sleep.”

Boobs reluctantly releases Serendipity’s hands and rolls onto her side, facing the wall against the other side of the bunk.  Serendipity rises slowly and goes to wet a washcloth in the adjoining bathroom, then returns to clean the crusted blood from Boobs’ forehead and hair.  Boobs smiles at the gesture but does not open her eyes.

Serendipity sponges Boobs’ skin in silence for a while, conscientiously wiping every trace of blood away, then she steels herself and asks bluntly, “What’s your name?”

Boobs doesn’t answer for a while, and her breathing is so slow and even that Serendipity thinks she may be asleep, but then she shifts a little towards her and says sleepily, “Hm?”

Serendipity considers pretending she hadn’t said anything, but that’s the coward’s way out. “I asked for your name. I never…I never caught it. I’ve been calling you ‘Boobs’ in my head,” she adds as apologetically as she’s able.

Boobs opens her eyes and turns to look at her, smiling in a mild, puzzled manner. “Ah, you are silly, _mon coeur_ ,” is all she says, which is really not what Serendipity was expecting; at the very least, she had anticipated slight offense. “What does it mean, this word ‘boobs’?”

Serendipity looks at her like she’s joking, but when her friend looks back up at her with a serious, waiting expression, Serendipity is forced to say, embarrassed, “Uh, it means, um…it means ‘breasts’, I guess. You know. Boobs. Breasts. I’d been using it as a nickname for you.”

Boobs nods like this makes a lot of sense and says, “Oh, I see. But…you also have breasts. And many of the others here too. So why are they not ‘Boobs’ as well?”

 _Really should have kept your mouth shut, girl_. “Um, well, yours are…they’re particularly…you know, they’re quite…”

In the end, Serendipity never does finish describing Boobs’ ample bosom and merely gestures helplessly, hoping she doesn’t look too grotesque, until Boobs’ eyes light up and she laughs, and Serendipity can’t really resist laughing herself. They chuckle together for a while, muffling the sounds against their hands lest they wake the others. There’s an awkward moment where it seems like Uldride and Danika might be at it again, but they only sigh and rearrange themselves on the single mattress before snoring anew, and Serendipity deems it safe to go on.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, her voice still trembling with giggles.

“Why?” Boobs asks, grinning. “It is a cute name.”

“What?”

“Isn’t it? I think it is cute. Thank you.”

“You cannot seriously be thanking me for that,” Serendipity says in disbelief, but Boobs only laughs again and clutches Serendipity’s hand.

And for the first time, Serendipity sees – or perhaps, finally notices – the gleam of mischief and mirth in her friend's eyes, and knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she has just had her leg pulled very, very hard.

_To think, I thought you stupid this whole time._

After a moment, Boobs collects herself and, wringing Serendipity’s hand carefully, says, “My name is Citrine. Like the precious stone you so admired in the market.”

Serendipity glances in surprise towards her trunk, where her citrine sits hidden, wrapped in old scraps of cloth at the bottom. “Citrine?”

“Citrine. Say it like _une_ _Orlésienne_.”

“Citrine,” Serendipity tries again, and Citrine smiles gently, her cheeks rosy with happiness.

“Yes,” she says faintly, the excitement and tiredness of the night now apparent on her face. “ But please continue to call me Boobs when we are together. I would like you to.”

“You’re the silly one,” Serendipity replies, but she’s already asleep and probably doesn’t hear.

Serendipity sits there for a few long moments, monitoring the slow rise and fall of Citrine’s chest, and only gets up once she’s certain the rhythm is steady. She abandons the washcloth in a basin and goes out to the lobby to snuff the single candle.  Then she heaves herself into her bunk, makeup and all, and instantly drops off to sleep.

=====

Serendipity awakens to a thin hand shaking her roughly by the shoulder. She growls and curses, batting the hand away as she twists away, towards the wall. The person attached to the hand huffs, calls her a name under her breath, and jumps to the ground.

“She’s awake, Madame.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

Serendipity doesn’t need this, not now. It’s morning but her throat is still sore where the bandit was clutching her, and her limbs feel paralysed with lingering fear. Ridiculous. She’s been in danger before. Fearing for her life is nothing altogether new.

Still, she doesn’t want to move. She feels sick to her stomach.

Lusine is standing beside her bunk. She says, “Serendipity. I heard you and the others at the coming-of-age ball had a bit of an...eventful return.”

“We were attacked by bandits. They hurt–” Serendipity pauses, trying to remember how to pronounce the name. “...Citrine. I’m sure the others told you about it already.”

“Yes, but you’re by far the sharpest of all of them, aren’t you?” It would be a compliment if it weren’t for the tone of her voice, and if it weren’t Madame Lusine. “Anyway, they tell me you were saved. Some sort of Hightown vigilante?”

Unexpectedly, Serendipity’s blood boils. _Not a vigilante, just a street rat who can’t shake the habit of being kind._

“Do you know her?” Lusine continues, not seeming to care that Serendipity would rather address the wall.

Serendipity hesitates. Then, angry with herself for caring, she says, “Hawke.”

“What was that? Speak up, dear,” Lusine says, faux-motherly.

“A girl named Hawke,” Serendipity says louder. “One of those rogues, I suppose. Street fighters.”

“Hawke...”

Lusine thinks for a moment, then says, with a new edge to her voice, “Yes, I know her. She was one of the poor sods who arrived here almost two years ago, during the Blight. From Ferelden. To think...hmm.”

Serendipity doesn’t like this new tone, but knows better than to show it. She remains steadfastly curled up in her bunk.

Madame Lusine is quiet for a long moment. Then, strangely, she reaches up and pats Serendipity on the arm with the tips of her fingers.

“You must have had quite a fright last night, my dear. Why don’t you rest today? You can take care of your friend while she recovers, how does that sound?”

“Fine,” Serendipity grinds out, then amends, because she does still have some sense of preservation, “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Lusine drifts away, the sound of her footsteps lost in the din of the morning’s preparations.

It turns out that Madame Lusine lets all of their little group have the day off.  It seems a kindness, but Serendipity knows better.  The madame simply doesn’t want any of her potentially traumatized merchandise scaring off the customers.

Serendipity idles the early morning away, laying on her high-up bunk with her back to the room, listening to the others shuffling around and gossiping and laughing shrilly before moving off to their first clients of the day.

It has never before struck her as strange that there are customers starting from mid-morning.  Her perspective seems entirely different suddenly, from up here in her bunk, as she peers down at the bustle of activity in the collective dorm.  Women and men, girls and boys scurry around in various states of undress, yelling at each other across the room and from the dining hall.  From up high, it’s all so fast, confusing, disjointed.  From up high, it seems...wrong.

Imagine someone like her, taking the moral high ground like this. She could laugh, almost.

Serendipity curls back against her ratty pillow as though it will block out the sounds of the flurry of activity below.  There’s a blurry black and ochre spot in her vision: she’s smudged makeup on her pillow, and probably over her face too.

She waits for a long time, until the sounds of the laughing, jeering, teasing whores filters down to the ambient noise of mid-morning debauchery.

Everyone’s gone.

“Hey, Serin.”

Not quite.

“Sod off, Jethann.”

“Not going to work, Serin?  You too good for the likes of our profession now?”

“I said _sod off_ , Jethann,” Serendipity spits, leaning part of the way off the edge of the bunk to flash him her middle finger.  “Or I’ll cave your pretty face in so hard even the alienage folk won’t want you back.”

Below, Jethann shrugs.  He’s always been a turd, ever since their shared childhood in the Lowtown alienage.

“Suit yourself.  I’ll still always be prettier than _you._ ”

Serendipity snarls and disappears back onto the other side of the bunk.  As Jethann laughs and walks away, she imagines pulling out every single one of his teeth, one by one.

She can only manage lying in bed for another few minutes. Once everyone is really gone, she clambers down, washes the smudged pigment from her face, and goes to sit by Citrine’s peacefully sleeping form.

=====

No one says anything more about the incident. Life at the Rose resumes as normal, or what passes for normal around here.

Citrine recovers her old health and sunny disposition by the next day, for which everyone is surprisingly thankful, because a day without the incessant chatter of one’s own resident Orlesian floozy is an emptier one, apparently, for all but the most jaded of courtesans.

Citrine does not bring up the attack or the grateful tears again, for which Serendipity is deeply glad. She gets a rib-crushing hug from her once Citrine recovers from the lingering headache, and that’s more than enough for her, thanks very much.

Thus, several weeks pass, dull with seasonal heat.

Even the Blooming Rose grows boring in the late summer, when the patrons are numerous but torpid, lazy with sun and spiced wine. Serendipity hates them more than usual when they come to her sweating and complacent, but even she does not have the energy to be too scathing when the heat is this crushing. A brothel does not close for the seasons, fortunately or unfortunately.

Hawke comes in a few times during those weeks, always on a different day of the week and never twice at the same hour, and despite the wretchedness of either the stifling heat or the heavy summer rain. She sweats considerably under her tunics and leather plates as well, unused as she is as a native of cold Ferelden to the northern climes, but when she comes to Serendipity she is no longer street-stained, no longer even drawn. Serendipity often makes her bathe when she arrives, but that’s a prelude to their tumble more than a necessity, because Hawke smells like jasmine and expensive imported soaps. Serendipity no longer tosses Hawke’s men’s tunics and breeches to the floor even in their haste to taste each other’s skin, because they feel like fine woven cotton and are stitched with an artisan’s deft and caring hand. And perhaps most telling of all, the blades that Hawke draws out of hiding from the shafts of her boots are new and fine, silver and wickedly sharp, a far cry from the sturdy but aging knife she had brought from Ferelden almost three years ago.

Yes, it’s taken years but the city has finally claimed the street rat. The Hawke of those first, faltering, uncertain days is now altered, become ever more like its self-satisfied Hightown dwellers in wealth and status, having added a pocketful of gold and an unfamiliar elegance to her old wiry strength.

Serendipity dislikes it. The younger Hawke may have been weary and rough and tumble, but she had grit and a grim sort of satisfaction in her everyday work, of which there is a noticeable lack of among the gentry of Hightown. It’s foolish of her, but Serendipity doesn’t want Hawke to lose that, which is why she is angry a lot of the time when she sees Hawke approach, never sidling but straight from the door to her, but clothed in the trappings of the venomous upper echelons. And so Serendipity tears the clasps of the girl’s finery wide open, growls against her throat that still smells of costly incense, ruts against her body pampered by rich northern foods and  warm tiled rooms that most of the people of Kirkwall will never even glimpse the inside of.

Some days, Serendipity wants to destroy her, as though smashing the fresh veneer of nobility will draw the alert young street rat out again, so that things may go back to what they were before.

She never succeeds.

She’s not certain if it even matters.

=====

The crisis comes at the end of the long and muggy summer. It is past midnight, and raining a fine mist.

Serendipity is up in her assigned nighttime chamber, where a single candle burns as she scrubs herself down with a cloth and tepid water from a basin. Her last client was a mercenary type, intent on spending his recent earnings, earnings that are so recent in fact that she suspects he didn’t even bother to change his hunting clothes before coming here and choosing her to slake his thirst. A courtesan is taught to never complain in good company for fear of alienating her next potential customers, but that doesn’t stop Serendipity from cursing the filthy pig out loud as she scrapes the cloth down her legs. This was a rotten night and she’ll be glad when it’s finally over.

She tosses the cloth back into the basin, where it lands with a satisfying splash, then she ties up her corset again and  shakes out her underskirts. Maker, but she’s loathe to get back into her clothes again, for they reek of the mercenary’s bodily stink and the lesser but more persistent, metallic scent of blood. Instead, she backs up and sits down heavily on the mussed bed with a huff, and sits still for a while just contemplating the shadows on the walls and listening to the gentle ticking of the rain on the amber-lit panes.

That’s when she hears it, the strange, scraping sound against the wall, not inside but out. She instinctively looks towards the window, but it’s dark beyond the glass. She stares. Nothing happens.

Serendipity gets up from the bed and slowly steps over to the window, crossing her arms tightly under her padded bosom. She’s only ever liked the look of Kirkwall at night, when one can hardly tell the high town from the low, or the rich from the poor. Night is equalizing, a blanket that covers all regardless of class or caste or homeland.

Of course, the night was always worse for her, as far as she can recall. One thinks too much at night. The only reason Serendipity sleeps now is because she is always too drained to do otherwise, once her day is through.

She sees herself reflected faintly in the glass, ghostly pale, lit on one side by the candle’s golden flame. She likes the look of herself better at night too, when curves and angles meld together, and the swells of her stuffed corset feel warm against her arms.

A sound, like the tumbling of a very small stone. Then, like a spectre, something rises from under the window sill and grasps the outer latch of the window pane. Serendipity starts backwards and utters a curse.

She’s still staring and breathing hard when the rest of the spectre heaves itself up into a precarious position on the sill, and it’s no ghost at all but a girl, a dark-haired girl with steely hard limbs and the posture of a thief in the night.

Serendipity breathes out, hard, then rushes to wrench open the window. It’s Hawke.

“What do you think you’re doing, you stupid girl! Get in, get inside. Andraste’s flaming ass…”

She grabs Hawke by her open collar and drags her off the sill and into the room. Hawke makes no sound, just stumbles in – Serendipity’s never actually seen her stumble before, and for some reason it jars something deep inside her – and takes a few steps onto the wood flooring. Her black hair is plastered to her forehead from the drizzle, framing her eyes that are dark and red-rimmed with exhaustion. Her fine clothes are scorched and torn, and smell of sulfur and of the heavy metallic scent that precedes thunderstorms, and strongly, overpoweringly of blood.

Serendipity shoves past Hawke to close the window against the cool evening mist, then turns back with a snarl.

“What do you think you’re doing, Hawke?” she grinds out between clenched teeth. “Climbing the walls like a giant spider, how do you–you can’t be in here like this!”

Hawke doesn’t turn around as she says, in the low, sad voice that Serendipity hates to hear, “I’m sorry I caught you undressed.”

“Please, you’ve seen worse,” Serendipity snaps, because she has, not the first time they came together but many times after that, just her and Hawke and their skin against borrowed sheets. “Just…why in the Void did you come through the window instead of downstairs, like you always do?”

“I had to find you…”

“You always know where to find me–”

“You don’t understand, it’s not for _that_ ,” Hawke shouts, swerving around so that Serendipity is rattled anew by the fresh burn marks and traces of blood on her tunic. “I need…I need to…”

And before Serendipity can say anything more, Hawke lashes out like she’s going to strike her, and Serendipity sees that but she stands her ground, because she always stands her ground. She’s been hurt by clients before but not by Hawke, never by Hawke because even when she gets passionate and rough she is never unkind, so Serendipity trusts Hawke would never–

Something whips past her like an arrow, whistling in the close air, and before Serendipity can even instinctively react there is a sound of sharp impact on the wall behind her, and the room goes dark.

Serendipity turns. The candle is extinguished, and pinned tightly against the wall by one of Hawke’s glinting silver knives.

Hawke makes a sound, a rough, wrenching sound from her throat that Serendipity has never heard from her before. She can’t see a thing in the dark, so has to make her way across the room with her arms extended, feeling for her. She jumps when Hawke’s hands land on her shoulders, their grip like iron, until she notices the fine trembling in her fingers, which she can feel only because her shoulders are bare. The smooth leather of Hawke’s gloves are marred with rough patches and hard-edged tears in the fabric that scratch against her skin.

Carefully, Serendipity says, “Hawke?”

And Hawke says, as the rain continues to drip outside, and as the room becomes closer and darker and warmer than ever, “She’s dead.”

Then, again, “She’s dead, Serendipity. She’s dead, she was killed and I couldn’t stop it.”

Serendipity is frozen on the spot, mind racing, wondering, Maker, who is ‘she’, and what have you been doing?

“First Carver and Bethany and now this. _To the Void with it!_ ” Hawke screams suddenly, and Serendipity winces but she can’t move away. “I just…Maker, I…”

“It’s all right,” Serendipity murmurs, because it’s the only thing she can say.

And Hawke laughs – _laughs_ , like she believes her, like this is just another evening together and Serendipity has just snaked her hand cheekily under the sheets – and then she begins to cry.

It’s incredible. Serendipity’s quiet, invulnerable street rat, crying like a little girl in the dark, destroying a candle so her tears cannot be seen. It’s enough to make her question the sanity of the universe, or the existence of the higher powers.

Serendipity doesn’t have to deal with this. It’s not her job, and it’s not like they’re friends. She barely knows Hawke outside of the nights they’ve spent rolling and tossing on the bed beside them, and outside of being saved in the night by her silent step and flashing blades.

She owes Hawke her life, but nothing else.

So why?

Serendipity places her hands on Hawke’s wrists, and slides them carefully up her arms to her shoulders then slowly, slowly up until her fingertips are brushing the nape of her neck. Hawke stills at the touch, tense and alert even now as she weeps for the ones she’s lost.

Neither of them says a word. They stand like that for a long time, as the rain hits the outside panes, and  raucous laughter echoes faintly up the stairs.

Eventually, Hawke’s tears subside. It takes less time than Serendipity would have thought. She loosens her grip on Serendipity’s shoulders gradually, until her hands completely fall away. She doesn’t move closer and or farther, so Serendipity keeps her fingers curled against her nape.

Hawke exhales slowly through parted lips. Serendipity can barely see her in the dark.

“I’m sorry,” is the next thing Hawke says to her, which is understandable and also stupid.

“Don’t,” Serendipity sighs. “If you thought I’d turn you away, you wouldn’t have come, right, serah?”

She can imagine Hawke’s sad smile with stunning clarity, and wonders when she had the time to memorize her face.

Hawke makes a quiet, hoarse sound under her breath. “Yes, you’re right. Still, I apologize for taking up your time. You could have been with a paying customer in the time I’ve been here.”

“This is better. My last one was a brute and a pig, and I’m not keen for more of the same,” Serendipity says flippantly, and Hawke laughs again, and moves forward to press her face against the side of Serendipity’s neck.

They stand in the gloom. The room slowly cools as the night progresses around them.

Serendipity strokes her fingers down the back of Hawke’s neck and feels her shiver just so. She asks, “Who is ‘she’?”

Hawke doesn’t answer for so long that Serendipity thinks she won’t, but then Hawke sucks in a breath and says, against her skin and in a steady voice, “My mother.”

=====

In the end, Serendipity does not go back downstairs to await more clients. She stays in the room with Hawke.

Eventually, she lights a new candle from the cabinet and gets Hawke to shuck her tunic so she can see the damage. There are minor burns and surface cuts on her skin, all superficial. Hawke treats and binds the deeper slashes with poultices from the pouches on her belt and leaves the rest, though she lets Serendipity clean them off with water from a second basin, and doesn’t flinch once though the wounds must sting.

Then they sit on the floor and lean back against the hand-carved cabinet doors in their underclothes, not moving, hardly speaking, certainly not touching, until the dawn.

Hawke dresses as the first rays of sunlight filter in through the rain-speckled window. Serendipity watches her sleepily, her head tipped back against the cabinet, as her shoulder muscles bunch as she raises her arms, and her bosom flattens and disappears under a tight-fitting leather vest under her tunic, and her fingers flex as she tightens the belt around her waist. The gentle light plays across her straight, impassive features, making them softer and younger-looking in the dimness, and not for the first time, it strikes her that Hawke really is just a girl, and if not that then a child, forced to fight her way through a world that can rob you of your homeland, your fortunes, your mother in the blink of an eye.

As she watches Hawke go from the vulnerable, grieving daughter to the flinty young street rat again, it occurs to Serendipity to ask about this thing that neither of them can name but that consumes their day and night time thoughts, the thing that makes Serendipity pad her corset with cotton and paint her face with colour and snap at those who call her a man, and that makes Hawke strap her bosom down under her clothes and walk with long strides and speak in a quiet, gruff voice that resonates through her chest.

In the end, she doesn’t ask. She figures, like she always had, that they’re just deviants, and that their weird habits are things to be hidden in the deep, dusty closets of their minds. Serendipity is lucky, in a sense: her particular perversion can be used as a thing of fascination and charm for the Hightown dullards. Her body is a business to them, their activities an exchange of goods. She has nothing to prove to _them_.

But Serendipity watches Hawke in the rising dawn, as the sunlight steals across the wooden floor and warms her naked limbs, and knows that here is a person who has everything to prove, and the tragedy is that she may never get to do it.

As Hawke finishes putting on the rest of her gear, her armour against the world, Serendipity draws her legs up against her body like a child and watches her. This isn’t desire; she has no urge to touch. She merely sees, and observes, as she always does.

Hawke turns towards her, gloved hands on her belt. There is no hint of a tremble in any of her limbs.

“Thank you,” she says in her same, even voice, made just a bit rougher from grief and the sleepless night. “You’ve been so kind to me. I don’t know how to repay you.”

“I won’t accept any gold, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Serendipity says wearily, but Hawke shakes her head.

“Of course not. You’re not a mistress to be plied with riches.”

“Aren’t I?”

“For one thing, I’m not married.”

Serendipity huffs a laugh, letting her head loll back against the cupboard. Her underdress feels threadbare, hanging like scanty rags off her shoulders and hips. She’s tired, more tired than if she had actually spent the whole night pleasuring the filthy, foolish denizens of the richer Kirkwall. She wonders why that is. Perhaps something to do with idle hands.

Hawke looks at her as she straps her blades into place in the  sheaths on her back. Serendipity unfolds her knees away from her chest, exposing her naked shoulders and the tempting curve of her narrow chest. She lets her hands trail on the floor and looks Hawke straight in the eyes.

“You’re right, serah,” she says in a murmur, not trying at charm or the practiced femininity of the cultured whore. “I’m not a mistress. I’m far worse. I’m not worth the dirt on your boots.”

Hawke hesitates, motionless as a granite statue in the faint light. Serendipity gazes up at her, eyes half-lidded, hair a tangle, clothing a shambles. She’s a ruin of a prostitute, and she’s never felt more beautiful in her entire life.

Hawke moves, slowly. She steps towards her, one, two equal strides, then she crouches in front of her with one knee on the wooden slats.

“That may be,” she says gently, close but not touching. “But a Hawke always pays his debts in one way or another.”

Serendipity wants to laugh. Instead, she thrusts out a hand and smoothes her palm against the front of Hawke’s ruined tunic, over the strips of leather that bind her tightly in place. Hawke lets her.

It’s not a loving or sensual touch. Their breath does not catch and their hands do not shake, and their tongues do not stutter because they say nothing at all. They don’t have to. In one moment, as the sun finally rises over the dusty peaks of the lower city and the morning dew begins to burn away, all is understood.

Serendipity asks, “Did you kill him? The person who murdered your mother?”

Hawke says, “Yes.”

And Serendipity smiles, and slides her fingers down and off Hawke’s flat, solid chest, and says, “Good.”

She lets her hand fall back to the floor, and  motions to the window. Hawke stands up without another word.

She is on the sill and about to leap down when Serendipity says, in a voice tense with restrained, vicious laughter, “Don’t forget my payment. I want you to remember the man who destroyed your mother’s killer. I want to see him again.”

Hawke doesn’t turn around, only pauses just before the jump, and in a steely hard voice says, “Yes.”

=====

Serendipity does not see him again for a long time.

=====

The summer ends. A cool wind begins to blow in from the south, scented, it seems, with the rich dirt of far-off Ferelden, but that’s merely imagination.

The Blooming Rose functions like well-oiled clockwork. Not much changes from one season to the next, save the fashions and the gossip.

Serendipity likes the fall all right. It’s cooler than summer without being as dry as winter, and infinitely less damp than spring, which is why she idles one morning after breakfast, before the first midday rush of customers, on one of the brothel’s back terraces with the gentle southern wind in her hair and Citrine by her side.

Citrine yawns and stretches, raising her arms high above her head. Serendipity wouldn’t be surprised if some fool were stealing a look or two from an opposite window. She says so, but Citrine only laughs.

“Well, we are made to be looked at, _non?_ There is nothing wrong with feeling beautiful.”

Serendipity snorts, leaning boyishly over the railing. She feels grubby and unfeminine today, and it’s making her touchy. “Contrary to popular belief, not all whores like to be ogled.”

“Oh, of course. I was speaking of my own thoughts. I am sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, idiot.” She runs a hand through her hair, yanks out the ties with a frustrated motion and musses it all up in an attempt to feel likes she doesn’t care how she looks right now.

To her right, Citrine heaves herself up onto the heavy wooden railing with more ease than someone so top-heavy should possess, and perches on it with her ankles daintily crossed. Serendipity looks up at her momentarily, then looks away, down into the alley. Citrine makes a sound of concern and reaches down to gently move a lock of black hair out of Serendipity’s face.

“Something is troubling you, _mon coeur?_ ” she asks in a soft voice.

Stubbornly, Serendipity says, “No.”

Citrine tuts but doesn’t ask again. After a pause, during which a window opens downstairs, and someone’s infant child cries loudly enough for the walkers in the street to hear, she says, “Do you tire of this place, some days?”

Serendipity almost laughs. Instead, she says, “Every day.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Then why do you stay?”

Serendipity just has to look up at that, if only to call Citrine an idiot again, but can’t when she sees the look on her face, like she’s been slapped or robbed. It startles Serendipity more than she would have thought.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks roughly, and Citrine averts her eyes and bites her lip. After all this time, Serendipity still can’t figure out if her ultra-feminine charms and perpetual cheer are real or faked.

She realizes with a start that she doesn’t know the first thing about Citrine, aside from the obvious, the mundane that everyone knows: that she is beautiful, that she is well-endowed, that she is from Orlais. That she is always, _always_ cheerful. That she is gentle. That she is kind, to everyone, without fail.

Serendipity sighs and rakes a hand through her hair to untangle it. Then she puts the same hand on Citrine’s knee, as a grudging gesture of complicity.

“I stay here because I have nowhere else to go,” Serendipity tells her. “There’s nothing for me in any part of Kirkwall. Probably nowhere in the Free Marches.”

“You do not have a house in the alienage?”

“My mother’s house, yes. But I don’t want to go back there. It’s probably rundown by now, or someone else has taken it up. Anyway, the alienage elves don’t want me back any more than I want to go back.”

Citrine places her hand over Serendipity’s and squeezes carefully. “Surely they must miss you. They are your people…”

Serendipity snorts and says acidly, “No, they’re not.”

Silence. The stench of the Darktown sewers drifts up from the ground, but they’re far enough into Hightown that the smell is blessedly faint. Below and to the west of the Blooming Rose, the noise of the growing market crowd rises steadily as the morning wears on.

Serendipity thinks she would like her hand back now, but Citrine is holding on steadfastly so she lets her have it. She says, “You could go back to Orlais.”

“Hm?”

“You could go back. You have looks and charm and some savings. You could leave Kirkwall and go back there.”

“O-Oh, I couldn’t,” Citrine says bashfully, for some reason.

“No, you really could. Someone like me has no chance outside of here but you…you could wave your hand and tweak your skirts and anyone would give you a ride halfway down the Imperial Highway.”

Citrine laughs again, though it’s thinner this time, and Serendipity frowns.

“Don’t tell me you actually want to stay here?”

“Why not?” Citrine replies timidly. “It is nice sometimes. Like now. This is nice.”

“Yes, but you know as well as I do that moments of peace like this are few, especially for the Blooming Whores.”

“Then does that not make these moments worth even more?”

Serendipity sighs loudly, for show, which draws an automatic giggle from Citrine. “Yes, all right, you’ve got me. Carry on with your fairytale life if you wish, and who am I to stop you.”

Citrine makes a sound of happiness and pulls Serendipity’s hand up to clutch it against her heart, effectively burying it in her ample bosom. Serendipity struggles to yank it away but Citrine is strong despite her gentle looks, and Serendipity isn’t such a terrible friend that she’d knock a girl off a balcony for something so petty. She ends up half-heartedly laughing more than fighting, which gets Citrine to laugh some more, which results in both of them cackling until their sides hurt and Citrine almost falls off the railing on her own. She holds on tight to Serendipity’s shoulders as she hops down, even though she’s both taller and heavier, and when she’s safely ground bound she tugs Serendipity into a hug. Serendipity makes a token sound of protest.

“I would be lonely if I left now,” Citrine declares while crushing Serendipity’s ribs. “I’d miss you. I would miss everyone, but especially you, Serendipity.”

“Yes, okay,” Serendipity answers, her voice muffled.

Citrine continues to hug her until another courtesan pops her head out onto the terrace and calls, “All right, enough outta you two lovebirds. It’s time to get to work.”

“Yes, yes, coming!” Citrine answers jovially.

She gives Serendipity one last squeeze and releases her. Serendipity staggers a few steps away, breathing hard to fill her lungs again. She barely has the time to catch her breath when Citrine seizes her by the hand and drags her away, back into the brothel to begin the day’s work.

=====

As soon as the weather turns, the autumn feasts and balls and banquets begin to follow each other in quick succession. It seems that there is always a party of some sort in days of good weather. The rich quarters of the city are boisterous from  dawn until dusk, except on the mornings where a particularly large and indulgent celebration has left the participants wine-sodden and exhausted until well into midday.

It’s routine, really. Serendipity complains a lot about Kirkwall, about how it’s dirty and corrupt and full to the brim with idiots who can’t tell their arse from their elbow, but it’s been good to her lately. As good as a city can possibly be to an elven whore with a preference for women’s frocks, at any rate.

She’s in the middle of pleasuring an overweight nobleman who just won’t shut up when she realizes, with a strange pang, that today is her birthday.

She won’t be able to go tonight. She’s working, probably will be until dawn, and anyway it’s never a good idea for a woman to cross the city alone in the middle of the night. She doesn’t want a repeat of the scene from the summer. Hawke may be a foolish vigilante but he’s not omniscient, and Serendipity doesn’t consider herself lucky enough to be saved like that a second time.

She’ll go tomorrow, before the others even have the time to wake. It shouldn’t take long.

So, on the appointed day, Serendipity rises early despite last night’s late bedtime, washes her face, and swipes a hunk of bread from the already bustling kitchens for breakfast.

She hesitates over the small trunk where she keeps the total of her scant possessions, and after a brief moment where her heart stutters and she almost loses her nerve, she pulls out the dress folded at the very bottom, shakes it out, and slips it on.

She fixes her hair with impatient fingers in front of the one communal mirror, pads her bosom perfunctorily and touches her lips with colour. Then, she stands up straight and surveys herself in the reflective glass.

She doesn’t see anything new. Just herself, standing there in her mother’s old dress.

She thinks about wearing the citrine, on a cheap, worn chain that she picked up from the ground one day, but decides against it in the end.

She leaves the Blooming Rose as the dawn breaks over the rooftops, her steps the only sound in the sleeping brothel. She crosses the wide main hall, with its wilting garlands twined around the rails of the staircase and its colourful banners growing grey with dust and soot from the fire. One of the brothel brats slumbers under a table, curled up like a child although he is probably ten years old, if not eleven. Serendipity lets him be.

She pads silently through the foyer, where the extinguished candles lie in rows of melted stumps atop their holders, and without hesitation pushes open the front door.

Someone shrieks from the other side, and Serendipity would have slammed the door closed again out of surprise if she hadn’t already recognized the voice.

“What are _you_ doing out there?” Serendipity screeches, throwing the door completely open to reveal a guilty-looking Citrine, out in her best dress and not seeming to have slept a wink all night.

“I-It was my day off,” Citrine murmurs, eyes still wide with the shock of being discovered.

“So you didn’t come back all night? What were you even _doing_.”

“Nothing!” Citrine cries, and if Serendipity falls for that one she may as well go to the Void right now. “I was doing nothing, Serendipity, I…please…”

“You were with a man, weren’t you?” Serendipity hisses, one arm braced against the doorframe so that Citrine can’t just brush past her. “Well?”

Citrine looks like she might cry. “I…no, please, let me explain…”

“No. No, don’t bother. I don’t want to know anymore. Just…” Serendipity sighs and shakes her head, pushing away from the doorframe to let her pass. “Just go. Go to bed.”

Citrine doesn’t move, just stands out there with the faint dawn light rising up over her shoulder, looking for all the world like her pet nug has just died. Serendipity grabs her by the elbow and drags her inside, pushing her into the foyer.

“I said go on. Don’t get caught by anyone else.”

“Serendipity, I could tell you–”

“I said it’s fine, I don’t want to know. It’s none of my business who you decide to spend your off nights with.”

“It’s not like that,” Citrine insists.

Serendipity steps out the door and waves a hand distractedly at her. It’s gotten late; she’ll have to hurry so her own disappearance isn’t noticed. “How so? Do you care for him? Is he your love true? Because it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard that one.”

Citrine wrings her hands, gaze downcast, and says nothing.

Serendipity leaves, shoving the door closed behind her.

It’s early enough that even the perpetual guards and thugs that loiter in equal numbers here aren’t around yet, with the exception of the night watch who glances at her drowsily as she passes. Serendipity ignores him and trots past him down the stairs to Lowtown. It’s riskier than the longer route through western Hightown, but she has no patience left for circuitous walks.

She walks briskly, her mother’s dress flapping around her legs. The sewage stink floating up from Darktown is stronger here, acrid and vile, mixed with the smoke from the foundries and the salty stench of the nearby sea. Serendipity is used to it – she used to live down here, after all – but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

Drunkards loll around the alley circling the Hanged Man, all in varying states of consciousness. The state of being drunk is equalizing: guardsmen lean against Coterie archers, small-time bandits chatter cheerfully with off-duty templars like they’ve been friends for ages. Kirkwallers, Free Marchers, Fereldans, Antivans. Nobles and commoners, the destitute and the (relatively) respectable. But no elves. Elves don’t come here.

Serendipity doesn’t slow as she passes, not even when a man calls out and slurs out a confession of love and professions of her beauty. In the light of day, he wouldn’t even spare her a glance, except maybe to grimace, and to make a crude joke aside to his wife before Serendipity is quite out of earshot.

Finally, she’s there, past the dirty drunks in the alley, past the slums and the addicts trembling for their next fix of lyrium dust. She slows her pace as she walks down the crumbling stair to the alienage, and stops completely at the foot of it.

The _vhenadahl_ rises above her, branches extended to the brightening sky. The garlands and banners hung from it have hardly changed, have merely been renewed when they became too faded by the sun and torn by the occasional harsh rains. Offerings and handmade candles sit in neat stacks around the gnarled roots of the tree as a testament to the city elves’ continued show of filial piety. It’s one of the reasons Serendipity left; the elves’ gods are not her own.

She steps forward slowly, looking around to see if anyone is about, but the sparse, dirty square is empty save for her and the tree.

She stops again just next to a shelf full of offerings, incense and beadwork and several tiny polished stones, and bows once, deeply, to the tree.

“Hello, mother.”

She straightens and gazes up into the leafy branches again. The sun isn’t yet high enough to shine down through the leaves, so the canopy is dark and not at all mystical.

That’s it. She’s finished. With a sigh, she turns to go, and is startled for the second time that day by a door suddenly opening behind her. She grits her teeth and ignores the shuffle of footsteps behind her, but then a voice calls out, “Serin.”

Serendipity stops, considers for a moment, then gives in and turns back. The alienage elder is standing there, just outside her door, and is looking at her steadily.

“ _Hahren_ ,” Serendipity says.

The elder gazes at her levelly, surely noting the frock and the face pigment and the practiced feminine tilt of her hips, but she says nothing about all that, and only asks, “Have you returned to us, Serin?”

Serendipity scowls, just refraining from audibly scoffing, and says in an even voice, “No. I haven’t.”

“I see.” The elder looks up at the _vhenadahl_ still shadowed in the low light. “Then you come for the _vhenadahl_.”

“Not exactly.”

“Arianni has left us. Did you hear?”

“No, I haven’t, _hahren_.”

“She is with the Dalish living on Sundermount. Her boy has escaped the city to learn to control his magic, so she has gone home to them.”

Serendipity doesn’t care. And she never liked Feynriel anyway. She just repeats, “I haven’t heard.”

“I thought you might like to know, since Arianni used to care for you when your mother was indisposed.” The elder turns to look at her again, her gaze sharpened. “She was your mother’s closest friend.”

“I remember,” Serendipity says through clenched teeth.

“Then you are not concerned that she has left?”

“Was she concerned when _I_ left?” Serendipity snaps, her body losing the tantalizing S-curve and reverting back to the aggressive stance of the alienage orphan.

But the elder doesn’t rise to the bait. She merely regards her with utmost calm, back straight. It occurs to Serendipity just how _old_ she looks, despite the straight shoulders and stiff spine. But of course she’s old, she’s the elder, oldest and wisest of any of the elves currently living in the Kirkwall alienage.

Serendipity imagines living in the alienage for an entire elven life, dozens of years longer than the longest human life, and shudders.

“She was, yes,” the elder says finally, shaking Serendipity from her troubled thoughts. “When some of the children returned and told her they’d seen you go off into Hightown with a human woman, she begged me to go up and bring you back. She didn’t want you living the life that our kind live up there.”

“And what do you know about my life?”

“Nothing. Only that for the elves, there _is_ no life among the richer folk except for servitude or the sale of one’s body. And _you_ would never consent to being someone’s servant, would you?”

Serendipity’s chest feels tight with rage, and it must show on her face, but the elder is as impassive as ever. The only time Serendipity has seen her angry is when she would misbehave as a child, and the elder would choose to dole out punishment as a single ringing smack to the side of her head.

“Living as a whore may not be respectable or profitable,” Serendipity tells the elder, “but it’s still better than living here.”

She expects the elder to retaliate, to tell he she’s wasting her time and her life, that she should come back to her people despite the fact that she despises them all, but the elder says none of that. She only looks sad, which Serendipity hates even more.

Serendipity glances at the tree one last time, then turns on her heel and leaves the alienage, the worn stone steps falling to dust at the edges as her feet strike them.

Behind her, the elder says, just loud enough to hear, “Perhaps it is.”

And if she says anything else, Serendipity wills herself not to hear.

=====

Citrine avoids her for a couple of days. Serendipity doesn’t seek her out. She figures her friend is embarrassed at having been caught out and would rather not face the fact for a while, so Serendipity lets her wallow in self-imposed uncertainty and just works, not giving herself time to think about much in particular.

Then one morning, Citrine crosses the dining hall with her usual bowl of tasteless porridge and sits down across from Serendipity, and Serendipity smiles at her, and Citrine smiles back, and in an instant, everything is okay again.

It’s a good feeling. Serendipity has never felt anything quite like it.

And in that way, autumn passes into mild winter, into solstice balls and warm mulled wine and dreary leaden skies.

It is around the time of the Qunari rebellion when this happens.

It is Serendipity’s rest day. She’s thinking of going down to the market to buy a proper chain for her citrine. She wonders, briefly, as she brushes her hair out in the mirror and trades good-natured insults with a few girls of her acquaintance, if Hawke likes jewelry, and what he would say to see her in nothing but the pendant. The thought makes her smile for just a moment.

Then someone shouts from the other side of the room, and other people laugh like crows, as a stranger's voice cries out, “No, please, please! I have to find her!”

“You’ll just have to wait in line like everyone else, darling,” one of the girls says, and everyone else rejoins with raucous laughter.

Serendipity ties up her hair, ignoring them. She thinks Boobs – no, Citrine; the nickname grates her now though it never bothered its recipient – might have a rest day today too, so she might ask her to accompany her to the market. An elf shopping alone tends to draw attention, even when being taken for a servant.

“Please, you don’t understand! We need to go, we need to leave–”

“Aw, but lovey, you just got here! Why don’t you come into to the hall and pick your favourite? They’ll help you settle down.”

“No, but the Qunari– _Citrine! Citrine, où es-tu?_ ”

“That must have been a spectacular night, that your friend showed him,” one of the courtesans next to Serendipity says in an amused voice.

Serendipity grunts with distracted assent, checking her face paint in the mirror, then her brain backtracks and she says, “What?”

“Citrine. You know, _la belle Orlésienne, y_ our friend with the bosoms. That man’s been shouting for her for a while now.”

"I know who she is," Serendipity says, annoyed, and whips her head around to get a better look at the man. He’s nothing special, really, just another merchant type like all the other merchant types who walk in here, except he looks frightened half to death, which is an infrequent but not unheard-of sight at the Blooming Rose.

He isn’t shouting anymore, he just stands there in the middle of the knot of off-duty courtesans as they poke fun at him in their teasing way just verging on unkind. Serendipity thinks to herself _Don’t bother, don’t get involved, it’s no concern of yours_ , but as she’s doing so she’s already thrusting her beauty supplies back into her trunk and crossing the room with swift strides.

“What do you want with her?” she demands as she draws close, and all the whores turn to look at her.

The man gulps. Serendipity can actually see the sweat rolling down his face. His hands tremble as he implores her, in an Orlesian accent thickened with agitation, “Please, do you…do you know Citrine? I know she works here. I have to find her–”

“Why?”

“W-We have to leave, we have to go. The Qunari…I heard, on the street, th-that woman was going to the Qunari compound to declare war. W-We’re going to war!”

“ _We’re going to war!_ ” one of the courtesans shrieks in grotesque imitation, and the others cackle mercilessly.

“What are you talking about? What woman?” Serendipity snaps, not certain why she even cares.

“The woman that everyone is talking about these days. The Fereldan refugee who came back from the Deep Roads with r-riches beyond imagining. They say sh-she wields a blade like no one else can, n-not even the Knight Commander.”

“You mean Hawke?”

At the name, the others fall into a weird hush, and the man nods vigourously. “Yes, yes, her! She and her companions have been getting up to all sorts of things with the Qunari and now it’s all gone to the Void! That’s why we need to go, before this whole city goes up in flames–”

“That’s ridiculous,” one of the onlookers interjects, but it’s weak, and the eerie silence of the others says so.

After an uncomfortable pause, someone else says, “I saw her leave this morning. It’s her rest day, so maybe she’s gone to the market.”

The man surges up at that, and stumbles out of the common room towards the exit. They all watch him go, befuddled.

Serendipity has a horrible feeling. After a beat, she follows him out.

Before she can take more than three steps out the door of the Blooming Rose, a blood-curdling cry rises up from the west, from Hightown.

It has begun.

She can see the man running towards the market, shouting “Citrine! _Citrine!_ ” at the top of his lungs, which is stupid to say the least. Serendipity isn’t yet sure what’s going on but she at least knows that running through a dangerous street while screeching like that isn’t going to get him _less_ killed. But then, he’s not her problem. Her problem is Citrine and she’ll be damned before she leaves her out here when the whole city is in a crisis.

Serendipity plunges a hand into her basque and draws out the fine silver stiletto that Hawke had gifted her with shortly after the altercation with the bandits last summer. It’s light and perfectly balanced in her palm, and it also won’t be much help against a Qunari warrior, but it’s better than nothing at all.

No hesitation, not any more. She runs for the market.

=====

The sounds of clashing steel in the distance draw her, because knowing Citrine and her luck, she’ll be there, flailing and scratching and insulting the Qunari’s mothers in shrill Orlesian.

The market square is in shambles, stalls splintered and expensive wares strewn about like filthy rags. There are also bodies piled up among the rubble, bodies clad in costly silks and polished stones that cost more than her entire wardrobe. Splashes of blood gleam like precious gems on the flagstones, burning red in the midday sun.

And it smells like Darktown: sweat and filth and blood and steel. It coats the inside of her throat, making it difficult to breathe.

There’s no one dangerous in sight from this end of the square, but Serendipity grips her stiletto in the way that Hawke showed her, and advances cautiously.

She doesn’t dare to call out Citrine’s name.

“Citrine! _Citrine!_ ”

Some aren’t quite so careful.

Serendipity bites down all the synonyms for _stupid flaming Maker-forsaken blighter_ and heads in the direction of the man’s voice, blade at the ready. In the distance, someone – or something – roars, a battle cry that makes the hairs on the back of Serendipity’s neck stand on end.

“Citrine! Citrine, _où es-tu?_ ”

“Shut _up_ , you fool,” Serendipity gripes under her breath.

“Finian? _Finian!_ ”

 _There she is._ Serendipity breaks into a run again, following the sound of the familiar voice that is raised and quavering in fear. She is _not_ going to let her get hurt again. She’s no fighter, never has been and never will be, but she _loves_ fiercely and anyone who takes Citrine will do so over her dead maggot-infested corpse.

She races into an alley adjoining the market square and halts with a stumble, because Andraste alive, there are Qunari in there and they’re huge and covered in blood. Serendipity can only watch as one of them skewers a minor lord she vaguely knows on the end of his gigantic blade, then discards the still-gagging corpse with a dismissive fling of his arm. A knot of chambermaids squeal where they’re sitting hunched in a corner between two buildings as the body lands next to them, splashing the hems of their dresses with blood.

And there’s Citrine, in another corner but not crouched, no, she’s standing with her back against the wall and with fire in her eyes, arms outspread to shield the slighter figure cowering behind her. She doesn’t waver as two of the Qunari warriors turn towards her, having finished with their current prey. As one of them takes a heavy step towards her, blade drawn, she spits at him like an angry cat and balls her hands into fists, widening her stance as she prepares for the fight. Serendipity can’t help but be impressed.

She also can’t afford to wait. As swiftly and quietly as she can, she starts to make her way across the alley, creeping around the rubble at the backs of the Qunari and trying not to think about how they’re about three times her size. From this distance, she can see a rivulet of blood running down Citrine’s cheek and a laceration at her thigh, dirt all over her and bloodstains on her knuckles. Behind her, the man from the Blooming Rose stands quivering, his hands on her shoulders, being absolutely no help at all.

Citrine opens her mouth and, predictably, begins to hurl what Serendipity can only assume are insults in the Qunari’s direction, which is brave and stupid and isn’t stopping them from coming any closer. The man tries to shush her but she knocks his hands away with an irritated twitch of her shoulders and holds her stance, lifting her hands up like a brawler though it’s clear she has no idea what she’s doing. Serendipity keeps her eyes on her and the Qunari as she shimmies around a pile of broken crates and reaches the clear area just behind the warriors, then she pauses, just long to enough to call herself all the names in the book and a few more of her own invention, before she sprints forward and lunges with the knife, grasping it two-handed before plunging it into the closest Qunari’s side, where she hopes it will pierce something vital.

The Qunari lets out an awful roar that makes Serendipity want to cover her ears, but she holds fast and twists the stiletto in the wound, screaming, “ _Get away from her!_ ” as though it will help her situation in the least. She raises her head and locks eyes with Citrine for just one moment, a protracted moment where Citrine’s face is suffused with happiness and relief, before the Qunari gets over his surprise and knocks Serendipity away with the back of his free arm. Serendipity lands on her back on the ground hard enough to force the air out of her lungs, and even as her brain is shrieking at her _Get Up Get Up Get Up_ all she can do is lie there gasping, scrabbling weakly for the blade that isn’t there.

Above her, the Qunari yanks the stiletto from his side and tosses it away like it’s a twig. Then he fixes her with fierce eyes painted over with red pigment like blood, and with a derisive grunt, lifts his weapon and poises it above her, as though pondering on the most painful and gruesome way to kill her.

Serendipity forces herself to sit although she still can’t breathe, but she has no hope of getting to her feet and scrambling away so she might as well resign herself now, say her prayers to the nonexistent gods and all that. But, proud to the end, she makes herself hold the Qunari’s gaze as the blade rises then begins to descend, rushing her towards the end–

“ _Non! Non, pas elle!_ ”

Serendipity can’t help closing her eyes as the sword swings down towards her, but when the blow never comes, she forces them open again and sees the Qunari staggering with a pair of familiar arms wrapped around his beefy neck. The Qunari pivots and swings his sword around with a frustrated sound, and Serendipity almost laughs because Citrine is hanging onto the deadly creature’s neck with her kicking feet dangling at least a foot above the ground, and it’s the most nonsensical and hilarious and terrifying thing she’s ever seen in her life.

“Run, Serendipity!” Citrine shrieks as the Qunari spins around in an effort to dislodge her.

The other Qunari is so bemused at the display that he hasn’t done anything but stand there and watch, but at the sound of Citrine’s voice he snaps out of it and moves forward to swat her away, and Serendipity shuffles to the side as she casts her eyes around desperately for the stiletto, her breath still coming in shallow gasps that hurt more than help.

_Useless, you’re useless! She’s going to die and you wouldn’t have done anything to stop it!_

She grabs a piece of broken wood from the wreckage, getting splinters all over her palm, and hurls it in the Qunari’s direction, where it bounces harmlessly off his muscled torso. Serendipity curses bitterly and surges to her feet, swaying and feeling like she’s choking on her own organs but that doesn’t matter, all that matters is Citrine and her well-being and to the Void with all the rest, so she runs again _stupid stupid what are you doing!_ She collides with the Qunari her friend is hanging onto for dear life, clawing and kicking at him for all she’s worth, and the Qunari is beyond annoyed now. He sweeps Serendipity’s legs out from under her with a swipe of his leg so that she lands in the dirt again, and Citrine falls to the ground beside her with a squeak. She grabs for Serendipity as the two Qunari advance upon them with their weapons raised, and this time it really is the end, Citrine’s face tells her so, but that’s all right, they did all they could…

“CITRIIIINE!”

When the same Qunari cries out this time, Serendipity is pretty sure he’s swearing in aggravation because he’s just been stabbed with the stiletto again, and holding it is none other than the idiot from the Blooming Rose, the shrill, cowardly man that Citrine called Finian, who has come out of hiding in the corner to take a final stand.

It’s short-lived. The second Qunari slams the man to the ground with one huge fist, then plunges his blade into his gut before he can stand.

Citrine screams, a high, wordless wail that echoes in the alley, and that rings through Serendipity’s head for the entire night that follows.

And as though summoned, the City Guard arrives, blades flashing in unison, led by the Captain herself. She shouts commands across the way to her guardsmen – “Don’t let them leave here alive! If any more make it to the Keep, Hawke will be done for!” – and together they make quick work of the two Qunari.

“Are you all right?” Guard Captain Aveline asks them personally, and Serendipity and Citrine can only nod.

Then the Guard leaves to clear out the rest of the city, and Serendipity and Citrine are left alone in the middle of the alley, with a bleeding man and with a bunch of pampered servants sitting crying in the corner.

Citrine makes a low sound of grief and crawls towards the man on the ground, who lies gasping with a bloody hole in his gut, his blood-covered hands shaking as he fights to keep the wound closed.

“Finian,” Citrine whispers in a broken voice. “Finian, _s’il-te-plaît_ …”

Finian meets her eyes blearily, his lips parting with difficulty.

“ _Soeurette_ ,” he says, before the light goes out of his eyes, and his hands drop slowly to the ground.

Citrine sits in the dirt beside him, his blood seeping into her clothes, as she repeats her brother’s name again, and again, and again, in an increasingly agonized voice, until her composure fails her completely and she begins to scream, wordlessly, soundlessly but for a thin plaintive whine that can barely be heard over the sounds of battle in the rest of the city.

Serendipity wraps her arms around her and holds her tightly as she cries. They sit there for a long time, dirtied and bloodied but alive, but there’s no joy in that fact, not while a girl’s long-lost brother lies dead on the ground, not while the bodies of hundreds of Kirkwallers lie festering in the sun.

Serendipity rests her cheek against Citrine’s shoulder and closes her eyes, and wishes, irrationally, that Hawke were here, that he had arrived in time just like before, blades dancing and eyes flinty cold, but that’s just wishing.

And if Serendipity has learned anything in her life, it’s that wishes rarely come true.


	3. Act III

The Viscount is dead, but the city is saved, thanks to Hawke.

Serendipity feels like she should have known. Hawke is someone who is destined for great things, and she didn’t see it at all.

All she saw was someone who was just like her, perhaps younger and faster and better with a blade, but otherwise the same. And now Hawke, her dark-haired, dark-eyed street rat, was out playing the hero for all the people of Kirkwall to see.

It angers her, for some reason. It strikes a nerve deep inside her for reasons she can’t explain.

She ignores it, in the end. There’s no point in holding on to dark feelings like those.

The city rebuilds itself slowly and is whole again by the summer, just before the customary heat envelops the Free Marches. Most of the remaining Qunari are gone, sailed off for distant lands, or maybe even home. It’s like nothing has happened at all.

Except even the fancy whores of the Blooming Rose can feel it, the tension in the air that has nothing to do with the seasonal heat. They may only be courtesans but they aren’t vapid for the most part, and even the dimmest of them remember what happened to Idunna, all those years ago. There are no more mages left within the Rose, to Serendipity’s knowledge, but some of the others will still jump when a templar walks into the hall, despite not being mages themselves.

Serendipity has never bothered to get involved in the mage versus templar arguments that sometimes break out during rest times among the others, because she always had better things to worry about, and because she knew it was essentially an unwinnable argument anyway. And she had never even known a mage, not really, so who was she to judge? Everyone in this city seemed to act like an idiot at one point or another and it had nothing to do with whether they had any magic in their blood or not.

So she works, despite the anxiety permeating the atmosphere like the slow burn of a smoky lantern. There’s nothing else she can do. There’s nothing else she wants to do, really. She’s never quite happy but she’s not unhappy either. There are worse lives, worse cities. For now she’s content to work and squirrel away her coin and sit on the balcony and go to the market with Citrine, who still smiles too widely and laughs too hard although it’s been months since her brother died.

Serendipity asks about him, one evening after they’ve spent the whole day at the market hunting for new dresses, because Citrine looks happy enough that the darkness is almost completely gone from her eyes, and Serendipity thinks that means she’s getting better.

“He was my older brother,” Citrine tells her that night, as they sit together in the bunk below Citrine’s in the deserted common sleeping area. “By another man. But he visited my mother and I often when I was small.”

He continued to come while she was growing up, always with a treat or a trinket to give her. She adored him.

Then he left.

“For Ferelden. He was tired of being a farmer’s boy. He was good with a sword and an axe, and rode well, though he didn’t have the…um…stomach to be a warrior. Still, he wanted to fight the darkspawn, but at the time their threat was not great in Orlais. So he came to say goodbye, and travelled to the Free Marches to take a cheap boat south from Kirkwall.”

Her mother died after a long illness soon after his departure, leaving her daughter without a home or a trade. She travelled where she could, using what little coin she had and later, what natural graces she possessed.

Citrine smiles wanly as she says, “I had always found them so beautiful, _les courtisanes_ _d’Orlais._ I saw them in Val Royeaux as a child, one day when Finian took me to see the city.”

Her mother had always told her that her beauty was a gift, a virtue in itself. And what could be wrong with using her beauty to make other people happy?

“It isn’t that simple,” Serendipity interrupts, irritated at Citrine’s customary foolishness, but Citrine only laughs, and leans over to kiss her on the cheek.

Of course she knows that. She learned it a long time ago.

She made it to Kirkwall eventually, but by then she had nothing left, and was tired and starved. Madame Lusine found her begging in a Lowtown alley, cheerfully wishing the passersby a good day regardless of whether they tossed her their coppers or not.

The Blooming Rose was only going to be for a while, just until she earned enough to hire a boat to take her to Ferelden, but the longer she stayed, the longer she had to think about it.

And she realized that even if she did make it to Ferelden, she wouldn’t know how to find him.

And years passed.

It was by chance that she glimpsed him in the crowd one day last autumn. By then he was on his way home, not triumphant and bloated on the excitement of battle but worn, dirtied, and poor, wrung out by the Blight he had barely survived. He had only just managed to scrape together the coin to get to Kirkwall, and had not been expecting to find a single friend here, let alone his younger sister, whom he had thought left far behind in a country village in Orlais.

Together, they schemed to escape the city. She had a little gold, he had contacts from before the Blight. They were almost ready to leave when the fight with the Qunari broke out.

Citrine doesn’t cry again as she reaches this point in the story, but she sits staring at the floor for some time. It’s the longest Serendipity’s ever heard her stay silent while conscious.

After a while, Serendipity gets up to fetch the pendant from her trunk, and holds it up so that the lantern light shines through it, firing the tiny stone with colour. Citrine smiles sadly as she looks at it.

“Your mother named you after a gem,” Serendipity says finally.

Citrine nods. “It was a tradition in her family. All the women were named after precious stones. My mother was named Opale, and her mother before her was Améthyste.”

“It’s tacky, is what it is.”

Citrine laughs until she’s holding her sides, and Serendipity doesn’t see what’s so funny but she joins in anyway. She feels like she hasn’t heard her laugh in a long time.

“Oh, Serendipity. _Je t’adore_ ,” Citrine declares afterwards, and holds her tightly for a long moment.

Serendipity doesn’t know what the Orlesian part means, but she thinks she gets the idea. In any case, she embraces Citrine back and calls her silly, which at this point in their relationship means quite the same thing.

=====

In the morning, Citrine is gone.

=====

“Lusine!”

Madame Lusine hardly looks up as Serendipity crashes into her private rooms. It seems she’s used to such things, or merely lacks the shame to be embarrassed when intruded upon in her personal space.

“Good morning, my dear.”

“Don’t you ‘good morning, my dear’ me,” Serendipity snarls. “Where is she? Where is Citrine?”

Lusine has the gall to look surprised. “Citrine? Oh, you mean _la belle Orlésienne_. I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Serendipity isn’t fully dressed, nor is she combed or painted. Her daytime dress hangs unfastened and unpadded from her shoulders, and her face is stark with rage and elven pale without makeup.

She laughs harshly as she says, “You have no idea? _You?_ Of course, you do, you always have ideas. It’s your _business_ to have ideas.”

“Even so, there are still things that are beyond my control,” Lusine says reasonably. “Such is the nature of working with a house full of courtesans who moonlight as stage actors in their spare time.”

“Citrine wouldn’t just disappear,” Serendipity insists through barely reined fury. “She has a life here. She has a home! Why would she leave?”

“Why does anyone leave the Blooming Rose?”

“Why does–”

Serendipity stops, her gaze dropping to the floor as she thinks this over. Lusine wraps her skimpy housecoat more securely around her body and moves to sit on the stool before the vanity. When Serendipity looks up, Lusine is watching her with the closest thing to sadness she’s ever seen on her.

“Are her things gone?” Madame Lusine asks, in a surprisingly gentle voice.

“Yes, but–”

“Everything? Everything of both monetary and sentimental value?”

“Yes, yes, all of it, everything that was in her trunk!” Serendipity snaps. “Not that there was much. You made certain of that.”

Lusine regards her steadily, arms crossed. “I do what I have to do to keep this place alive. To keep all of _you_ alive. You know that, Serendipity.”

“Well, it’s still rubbish.”

“Yes, perhaps.”

“How can–I don’t…”

“Maybe she thought it was time to move on. No one can do this forever.”

“Wise words from a former whore, but look at you now,” Serendipity says spitefully, to a chorus of gasps from the doorway, where at least a dozen girls and boys are huddled to listen in on the exchange.

Serendipity expects Lusine to explode at this newest show of cheek, but for some reason she only sighs, and turns on the stool to face the vanity mirror. As Serendipity watches, she picks up her brush – an old, plain thing, deeply at odds with the lacquered pigment pots and expensive bits of jewelry that litter the tabletop – and begins to pull it through her hair.

It’s such an ordinary scene. Serendipity can’t stand it.

“We need to find her,” she starts.

“And how do you propose we do that?” Lusine asks mildly, not looking at her.

“I...she’ll head for the gates, for sure. She wouldn’t go to the docks, to Ferelden, there’s nothing for her there. No, she’d…she’d go back. Back to her mother’s house in Orlais.”

Lusine says nothing, merely continues to brush the nighttime tangles out of her hair.

Serendipity continues, in a fast, calculating monotone, “She doesn’t like to wake up early, so she won’t have gotten up much sooner before everyone else, just early enough so that no one in the common room was awake to see her go. She’d dump all her things and coin into that stupid beaded satchel of hers and run.” She looks up, at Lusine and Lusine’s reflection in the spotless mirrored surface. “We could still catch her if we hurry. It’ll take her a while to find someone willing to carry her out of the city without asking questions.”

“Then go,” Lusine says simply. She puts her brush down and smoothes one hand through her long hair, the locks still full and lush despite having lost their colour long ago. “See if you can find her. And then see if she’ll come back with you.”

“Why wouldn’t she? We’re all here. _I’m_ here.”

“You said it yourself: she has a house outside of Kirkwall. And anywhere she can build a home is somewhere she can build a life, one that doesn’t include selling herself to the likes of those that inhabit this Maker-forsaken place. I expect she would have returned sooner, if she hadn’t been waiting on that man of hers.”

“Brother,” Serendipity murmurs. “He was her brother.”

She turns to look over her shoulder at the audience still amassed at the doors, then turns back to Lusine, who is carrying on as though no one is there. She lifts one delicate ceramic jar in her hand and begins to daub its contents onto her cheeks. Serendipity watches her in disbelief.

“So you won’t help me?” she asks finally, in a soft voice.

“She’s gone, Serendipity,” Lusine says without turning around.

“But she could still be here. She could be convinced to come back. She needs to come back, what in Andraste’s name is she going to do on her own? Farm? Weave? Knit? She doesn’t know how to do any of those things. _This_ is the only thing she knows!”

“Serendipity–”

“No, I won’t just let her–”

Lusine slams her open palm against the vanity top, startling Serendipity into silence and forcing a shriek from one or two of the eavesdroppers.

“That is _enough_ , Serendipity,” Madame Lusine snaps, her eyes blazing in the mirror. “You’ve had your whine, now it’s time to realize what has happened and move on. If you want to run out and join her, I won’t stop you, but I would advise you to remember who it is that picked you up from the street all those years ago.”

“I would have made it by on my own,” Serendipity answers in a low, dangerous growl.

Lusine appraises her in the mirror, raising her hands again to continue their automatic beauty routine. “Would you have? Oh, then I must have made a grave mistake in bringing you here. By all means, go back to being a poor elven street rat in a borrowed dress, I’m sure you’ll fit right back in with the other elves.”

“I’m nothing like _them!_ ” Serendipity says in a rising voice, and Lusine answers, her voice still perfectly even, “Indeed not.”

Serendipity stands very still for a long moment, just staring at the madame as she finishes her morning ministrations, then she turns and stalks out of the room. The people huddled behind the door frame leap away as she approaches, giving her a wide berth as she crosses the threshold.

“Take the day off, Serendipity,” Lusine calls through her rooms, and Serendipity whirls around to yank the doors shut with a tremendous crash.

Standing in the main hall with her back to the other courtesans, she fusses with the collar and shoulder straps of her dress, feeling her bareness with sudden acuity. It’s unbearable all of a sudden: the boyish sharpness of her shoulders, the flatness of her narrow chest, the unpronounced curve of her hips. She wants to dash back to her cot and to stuff the top of her basque with padding like she always does, but it won’t help, it won’t, it won’t.

“Aren’t you going to go after her?”

It’s Jethann, standing against one of the hall tables, one hip cocked. She doesn’t like the look on his face; it’s a mean, sharp look, perfected after years of living in the alienage on scraps and envy and misery.

“Why would I?” Serendipity says harshly, no longer looking at him. “She’s made her choice. If she wants to leave Kirkwall and live a life of rustic poverty, it’s up to her.”

“Mm, I guess you’re right. She’s beautiful and human. She could belong anywhere.” Jethann’s smile turns knife-edged. “Unlike you.”

Serendipity glances at him, her hands still trying to fix the loose dress straps around her shoulders. “You’d better shut up, Jethann.”

“What? I’m just saying your friend is fortunate. Even if you did go after her, you’d never be able to live out there like she could. Our kind don’t belong out there in the real world, and _your_ kind even less.”

“Fuck off, Jethann. Just because _you_ were stuck in the alienage until Madame Lusine came to scoop you out–”

“You don’t know _anything_ about that,” Jethann snaps, his stance growing rigid. “You were gone by then, we thought for dead. Poor little Serin, _len’alas lath’din_ with no family, no skills with which to support himself! We all figured you were better off in the next world, but it turns out you were here servicing the rich _shems_ with the other painted whores.”

“As are you.”

“Well at least I don’t do it while wearing a frock and calling myself a woman–”

Serendipity snaps. She takes one quick step forward and strikes him across the face, and as he reels sideways in surprise she grabs him by the collar and kicks his legs out from under him so that he collapses with a scream.

Someone is shrieking in the distance but she can barely hear it under the haze of rage, so she ignores it as she shoves Jethann’s shoulder into the floor with one hand and starts pummeling him with the other, everywhere, anywhere she can  reach and see even though her eyes are getting blurry with fury and–

A pair of hands seizes her roughly by the upper arms, forcing her fist to a stop even though she struggles and curses and twists around to scratch and claw at her assailant. Jethann is still on the ground, squealing and cursing her name in Common and in broken Elven, clutching at his bloodied face with both hands. Then another man steps in to subdue her and Serendipity is forced off of Jethann and onto her feet, but not before she can spit in his direction and give him a final vicious kick in the ribs.

“That’s enough, Serendipity!” she hears Madame Lusine shout, and all at once the other sounds come rushing back: the gasps and cries of the onlookers, Jethann’s pained and heavy breaths, her own blood rushing in her ears as her feet scuffle on the tile floor, the two other courtesans’ grunts as they fight to hold onto her.

“That’s enough,” Lusine says again, but it’s pointless. It’s done.

Jethann staggers to his feet, pushing off one of the girls as she clutches at his arm to help him.

“You’re just the same,” he snarls wetly, through a bloody nose and teeth slick with red. “You may go by a different name and paint your face and tell everyone you’re a woman, but you’re still the same wretch that came out of the alienage. You’re no different than the rest of us.”

He stumbles off to nurse his wounds. Serendipity thrashes as though to follow him but the others keep a firm hold, and don’t let go until Jethann is safely out of sight.

Everyone is staring at her. Her dress has become undone again, the top hanging pitifully off her arms like a wench’s rags. She feels like she should be ashamed but she isn’t. She’s only hollow now, her anger spent, leaving her empty and dry.

Madame Lusine steps towards her, all of her clothes on and fastened, her hair perfectly brushed and her face paint perfectly applied: an old whore who’s been in this business her entire life, who’s seen all this before already, and will probably be seeing it again.

Slowly, almost tenderly, Lusine reaches out towards Serendipity and pulls her sleeves up over her shoulders, then ties the front closed so that it holds together even without the missing padding. Serendipity stares straight ahead, not looking anyone in the eye.

Lusine says in a low, firm voice, “Get out of here, Serendipity. Don’t come back until you are certain you want to remain here.”

So she leaves, the eyes of everyone in the hall following her until she steps out the door.

She considers, fleetingly, going to the gates, but dismisses the thought immediately. Jethann may be the same shit he was when they were children, but he’s not wrong.

About their people, or about her.

She goes to the alienage. The idlers in the square stare at her as she passes. She doesn’t care whether they recognize her or not.

Like magic, the elder appears at her side, looking older than ever. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask questions, just takes her by the arm with a soft, gentle hand and guides her towards one end of the alienage, where a familiar house stands waiting.

“Arianni’s,” the elder tells her, as though she doesn’t know.

But Serendipity nods, and lets herself be led inside. It’s empty here, just a bare cot and a worn old trunk, all of Arianni’s tattered but colourful implements gone back home with her to the mountains.

The elder leaves her there without another word. She doesn’t ask what she’s doing there, or what she wants, or how long she intends to stay.

Serendipity looks around the desolate little hovel, then slowly makes her way to the bed. She sits, slowly, and folds her hands in her lap. The knuckles of her right hand are split, laced with tiny red cuts from the edges of Jethann’s teeth. The marks sting faintly, and will hurt even more later on.

Outside, the sun will soon be reaching its zenith, right above the full, lush leaves of the _vhenadahl._

Inside, Serendipity bows her head, and clenches her hands together, and cries, quietly, without words, for a very long time.

=====

Before she knew any better, she would say she was born Serin.  But she knows now that she was never him.

His mother was...well, he never really knew what his mother was.  She wasn’t like the other city elves living crowded between the filthy walls of the Kirkwall alienage.  She bowed to the _vhenadahl_ every day when she passed, and whispered something like a prayer every night in a sibilant tongue Serin knew only vaguely as elven.  She knew how to gut and scale a fish, how to accurately throw a knife at twenty paces, how to splint a broken bone, how to stitch together two pieces of canvas so firmly that you couldn’t tear it apart with your hands.  She spoke differently from the others: quietly, with a kind of doe-eyed gentleness about her, never using the crass, sharp human curses, never breathing whisper of the Maker or his bride, hardly ever using _I_ but _we_ as a community, as a whole.

His mother seemed more Dalish than any of them, even more than Arianni, who came to them later.  Yet you could not say she was Dalish, for her unlined face, though burnished by the sun, was unmarked by blood ink.

Serin caused his mother trouble, from beginning to end.  As a whelp he would fight with the other children, and ruthlessly at that, clawing, kicking. biting, spitting like a cat.  Many times the elder gave him a stern talking-to and sometimes a slap, and his mother would always have to apologize on his behalf to appease the angry elder and the even angrier mother of the child whose hair he had pulled and whose shins he had bruised.

At home after these incidents, his mother would always close the shutters, turn around, and ask him in her same, gentle voice why he did it.  And Serin always had a reason.  He was a proud child, even then, but he never picked a fight without serious cause.  He wasn’t a common urchin.  He was his mother’s child – though even then, he had trouble thinking of himself as a son.

And Mother would always sit him down on her bed, and cradle him close to her warm chest, and stroke his hair.  And she would tell him, in gently accented Common, “Never apologize without cause.  You have proud blood in your veins, my love.  Do not betray it.”

He never did.  He was a troublemaker but he was no wretch.  He might not even have a drop of Dalish blood in his body but he was more like them than the dirty, wan elves here.  And that was something to be proud of.

It began coming to light soon after his eleventh summer.  He was trapped at home for two weeks, wracked with a wicked cough and a fever.  Mother sat by his side for as long as she could in the mornings but she couldn’t stay, because she had to work.  That was when, miserable with fever and boredom, he decided to go through her clothes chest to amuse himself.

That was where he found the dress, the only thing left of his mother’s old life, wherever that was.

He’d resisted going through her things before, first out of propriety, later out of a vague, torturous shame.  But that day he didn’t care.  He was wretched and dizzy with fever, and still sore from the beating he had gotten from the older elven children the week before.  All he wanted was a bit of peace, of happiness.

He found it in a light gown of handmade lace and soft-as-butter leather.  He barely thought before rushing to pull it on, his mind filled only with thoughts of how beautiful the dress was, and of how beautiful _he_ –

Serin turned slowly towards his mother’s cracked, dirty mirror.  He smoothed his trembling hands down the front of the dress.  Then, he looked up.

He was small for his age, but Mother was small as well, so the dress hung at just about the right length above his ankles.  The lace cuffs fit his wrists snugly, the lace sleeves clasping his arms all the way up like an embrace.  His too-long hair brushed the dainty lace collar.

Serin stared at himself for a long time, conscious of nothing else, not even the headache throb in his skull, or the fever burn on his skin.  He just stood and stared at himself in his mother’s dress, and for a few, precious, fleeting moments, everything clicked into place.

Then it was like everything came rushing back: the fever, the dirt on the window sill, the noise and filth of the alienage, the guilt, always the guilt, and Serin couldn’t deal with all of that so in a rush he yanked the dress off his thin body.  He tore the delicate lace collar in his haste but for now he didn’t care, he only wanted it off and away from him and back in the trunk with the lid slammed down and sealed tightly closed.

Serin crawled back into bed and drew the patched coverlet up over his head, and lay there unmoving until his mother came home.

=====

She’s dead now, her mother.  Killed eight years ago during a Carta-Coterie altercation.  She was only one casualty among many that day, but she was the only one whose memory was not honoured in the Guard Captain’s rousing speech, the only one not avenged in the raid that followed.  Even the other elves were scarce with their condolences, not that Serendipity cared.  She was already “Serendipity” by then, more so than ever now that she had no mother to embarrass and shame.  They cast wary glances at her as she walked by in her dead mother’s spare frock, but averted their gazes when she glared back at them.  The only ones who ever spoke to her during that time were Arianni and her half-breed boy Feynriel, and even Feynriel had ceased stopping to chat with her out of forced kindness ever since she started painting her face with cheap pigment.

The boys sought pleasure amongst themselves all the time.  Everyone knew that.  Yet they mocked her openly as she passed – Jethann and his gang of dirty urchins, and Feynriel too when his mother wasn’t listening – like she was garbage, like she was _nothing_ even in the cesspit that was the Kirkwall alienage.

Like she was just a wretched, delusional boy in a dress, sitting sweating in her mother’s tiny stall, selling her mother’s hand-twisted hemp bracelets and placemats.

The bracelets were sold to cooing old ladies and their grumpy wards, who so loved the primitive Lowtown culture embodied in the dyed hemp and hand-carved wooden beads.  The placemats were stolen in the night, to be used as rags or worse.

She tried making more, but only succeeded in getting hemp burn on her fingertips.  She had always lacked her mother’s delicate touch.

She refused to beg.

So when she bumped into Madame Lusine on a brilliantly sunny afternoon, was given the once-over and the stately, cursory nod, Serendipity didn’t look back.  She squared her shoulders and followed the stairs up to Hightown, and to the Blooming Rose.

=====

Three days pass, during which she considers everything from running off to Ferelden or to the Dalish or to simply throwing herself into the murky harbour water, before she straightens her spine and leaves the alienage without so much as a glance at the _vhenadahl_.

At the top of the stairs, the Blooming Rose waits, ever the patient, vigilant old whore.

It’s the middle of the day when she returns, a busy, bustling day of customary summer heat and daily debauchery. Like the complacent nobles who wine themselves lightly as a precursor to the night’s excesses, some people come here a little after noon to pre-empt the evening’s weariness, as though getting in as much activity as possible as soon as possible won’t yield the exact same results. The place is absolutely booming when Serendipity walks back in, so teeming with life that she goes almost unnoticed in the crowd, and those who do spy her act as if they don’t, out of communal shame. Serendipity sees them turn their heads away as she passes and knows that she’ll have this black mark on her for a while, but she couldn’t care less. Now that Citrine is gone, there isn’t anyone left here whose opinion she gives a nug’s wrinkly arse about.

Madame Lusine sees her from her usual place by the bar. When their eyes lock, she nods once, business-like, and Serendipity nods back. She goes when Lusine beckons her.

“Seneschal Bran has been asking after you,” Lusine says, entirely without ceremony. “He noticed you at the Comte de Beaupré’s birthday party last week. He says he wants to meet you.”

“He can go hang,” Serendipity says.

Madame Lusine clucks in a mildly irritated manner, though her face is blank and coldly professional. “You could do much worse than him, my dear. Do see him if he comes tonight.”

Seeing that she has no choice, Serendipity nods again. As she turns to go, Lusine snatches her by the elbow and holds fast with a claw-like hand.

“Jethann’s injuries are still healing,” she adds lightly, like this is quite inconsequential. “The money he could have made this week will be taken out of your wages.”

Serendipity can’t even muster the energy to be angry about that. She merely acquiesces with a lopsided shrug and pulls away. Lusine lets her go, already turning towards the next paying customer with her practiced madame’s smile.

Serendipity escapes the chaos of the main hall by shoving her way to the common rooms, where a few off-duty courtesans sit around giggling and gossiping in Antivan. They stare at her as she passes but don’t say a thing. Serendipity doesn’t even know their names.

She clambers up to her bunk with the intention of napping before the evening crowd comes in. She hasn’t done anything much for days but she’s tired, worn out more like. Her bunk is only slightly more comfortable than the cot that she had used in Arianni’s house.

She settles down to sleep without bothering to undress, but something nettles her, something stuck under the surface of her thin mattress. Grunting irritably, Serendipity reaches under for it, thinking it to be the small pile of coin she unwisely left behind when she ran off – but no, her gold, she recalls, is higher up, closer to her head. Then what–

She draws out a small, shapeless leather pouch, which she turns over in her hands, frowning. It’s a plain thing, cheaply made from rejected scraps, and as worn as though it had been travelling in someone’s pocket for a very long time. Someone had clumsily tried to decorate it with an ungainly row of wooden beads in rainbow colours. When Serendipity touches them, she recognizes them right away as elven work. Even in the city, elven crafts are the finest to be found outside of the most exclusive of artisan’s workshops.

Serendipity loosens the thong and shakes out the contents. At first it doesn’t look like much: a scrap of dirty paper and a rock, no more than a pebble, really, that is the same grey grit of every other rock in Kirkwall. But then Serendipity unfolds the paper, and seeing the uneven, wriggly writing on it, bounds from the bunk so suddenly that the Antivans chatting in the corner shriek with surprise.

Serendipity rushes out into the main hall again, where the noise has gotten possibly even louder. A few regular clients catcall her but she ignores them as she forces her way through the mass of bodies.

“Viveka,” she pants as she approaches the bar, winded from the struggle through the crowd.

Viveka turns with her best flirty smile fixed firmly on, but drops it when she sees Serendipity. “Oh, it’s you. Come back to us, have you? It’s just as well, we’re like family, almost.”

“Spare me,” Serendipity snaps, and shoves the scrap of paper towards her. “What does this say?”

“Why should I tell you?” Viveka says coldly, all pretense of familial affection gone.

“Because I can’t read,” Serendipity growls.

“Hm. No. Try again.”

Serendipity just barely refrains from strangling her where she stands. “Because it’ll make you feel important? Because it’ll give you something to lord over me, not that you need any more ammunition.”

“That part is quite true,” Viveka says with a nasty underhanded smile.

“So tell me what it says, if you’re so damned educated.”

“Oh, _all right_ ,” Viveka sighs, and snatches up the paper with exaggerated grandeur. “But only because you’re like a sister to me.”

For a single, fleeting, alarming moment, Serendipity thinks she might begin to cry, but the urge is gone in the next second, and she’s merely hungry for whatever words are scrawled in loose, juvenile script on the scavenged paper scrap. She waits impatiently as Viveka holds the paper aloft with two fingers and reads it with intense concentration, as though memorizing lines for a play. Serendipity could probably learn to read Common faster than Viveka can read that entire scrap.

“Well?” Serendipity prompts, after a too-long silence.

Viveka looks oddly blank one moment, then shrugs the next, holding the paper back out to Serendipity, and says curtly, “Can’t read it.”

“What do you mean you can’t read it?” Serendipity almost screeches. “You keep the books! You couldn’t do that if you couldn’t read!”

“Will you keep it down?” Viveka shouts in the lowest possible whisper. “I can read the books, but I can’t read this!”

“Why in the Void not?” Serendipity shouts back, not bothering to mimic Viveka’s ridiculous whisper-shout.

Viveka makes an outrageous, frantic face, her plain features more animated than Serendipity’s ever seen them. “I don’t really read that much, you know. Everyone makes a big deal about how I keep the books but it’s really all just names. I can memorize how everyone’s names look. When a new one gets written down, I get Madame Lusine to read it to me and then I memorize that too. That’s all.”

“You’re kidding,” Serendipity says flatly.

“I swear to sweet Andraste,” Viveka replies, gesturing theatrically to the sky in what is supposedly Andraste’s general direction. “I was never one to pay much attention to my lessons. So sorry, Serendipity dear. I can tell you that your name is on the top of this note and Citrine’s is on the bottom, but that’s really all.”

“You really should have stayed in whatever noble house you ran away from,” Serendipity snarls meanly, before stalking away to hide in her bunk, from which she doesn’t plan to move from whether or not the seneschal deigns to show his face.

=====

The days are long and dull without Citrine to spread around her habitual cheer, which makes the nights longer and duller still. Serendipity finds she loses track of time every once in a while, like she can’t even be bothered to recall how many days are left until the Autumn Harvest or at what time the sun sets in the winter.

It’s cold again, for Kirkwall, anyway. The settled Fereldans seem happy enough with the weather, most of them strolling around in nothing warmer than their leather jerkins and ratty cloaks while the Kirkwallers and travelling Free Marchers shuffle stiffly around in thrice-wrapped mufflers and fur-lined capes. If it gets any colder it might even snow, which is possible but highly unlikely. Serendipity hopes that it might happen, a little. She could use a miracle, but it’s not like she believes in them.

She does end up meeting Seneschal Bran after all, about a week after she returns to the Blooming Rose. He is laconic but polite, rough but not hurtful, and afterwards he compliments her work and leaves a substantial tip, which is always welcome.

Overall, he’s not really her type – though what her type actually is, she wouldn’t bother to say – but he’s courteous, and quiet, and doesn’t have a wife to complain about during their pillow talk.  And he doesn’t call her a man, at least, not to her face, which is a weak improvement but an improvement nonetheless.

Serendipity almost likes Seneschal Bran.  It’s a strange feeling. In any case, she goes with him whenever he asks, whether it’s at the Rose or at some more exclusive Hightown venue, and she stands at his arm and smiles at the right moments and does her most charming best, because it’s not like her best is reserved for anyone else.

She imagines Citrine would tease her.

“Ooh, _le beau sénéchal de_ Kirkwall!  What luck you have, Serendipity!  All of the girls are in a fit of jealousy over you, you know! Oh, and some of the boys as well, of course.”

With her gone for months now, there’s no one to poke fun at her over her regular customers or to cheer her up with enthusiastic, heartfelt platitudes when she returns weary from the night, and certainly no one to remind her of the man who first came to her as a world-worn street rat, the man who once climbed in through her window like a secret lover but whom she has not seen since before the Qunari rebellion back in the late winter months of last year.

Citrine called him _la belle Fereldan._ The memory still makes her smile, grimly, when she thinks of it.

Hawke hasn’t returned since that night stained by his mother’s blood. It’s not his fault, he’s busy and important now. Serendipity has heard, from second and third hand accounts, about how Hawke supposedly defeated the Arishok in single combat in front of a crowd of wealthy onlookers. The best way to get hooked into the world of high class parties and plodding political discussions is to rescue a bunch of defenseless nobles. It turns out that not many people care that their saviour is a Fereldan refugee if he saves their guts from being spilled out by a Qunari warrior’s sword.

They call him the Champion of Kirkwall now, a lofty title that Serendipity is certain he would never coin for himself. The Hawke she knows is no great champion, no dashing hero, but a shadow melting through the night, who just so happens to have decided to turn his blade against the low-lifes plaguing Kirkwall. The people think Hawke champions for them but he doesn’t, he’s only doing the one thing he knows how to do.

An ambivalent champion. And people are even saying he should become viscount. It’s hilarious.

Serendipity doesn’t miss him.

=====

They meet again at an official party.  It’s a high class affair, by far the fanciest Serendipity has ever been to.  She could spend the entire evening gazing at the crystal fountain and at the sapphire-encrusted chandelier, if she were not already so jaded.  She’s also dutifully obliged to make eyes at Seneschal Bran all night, as they both pretend to not see the uncomfortable glances exchanged by their company.  Serendipity suspects the seneschal secretly enjoys the minor scandal.  It must be a symptom of his luxurious upper-class lifestyle.

Well, to the Void with all that.  She’ll be well-fed and with any luck, well-bedded tonight.  And Seneschal Bran has given her a silverite chain as a gift for the occasion, so she had her citrine attached to it to dangle around her slender neck.  In a fitted yellow dress she borrowed from Porfiria and with matching yellow hair ties and with a broody red-haired city official by her side, she feels passably pretty, and will feel even more so once she can get Bran alone in one of the upper rooms.

During a pause in the surrounding conversation, Serendipity takes the liberty of curling the fingers of both hands around Seneschal Bran’s upper arm.  A stately lady directly in front of them makes shifty, uncertain eyes.  Serendipity sees Bran smirk, just on one side of his mouth, out of the corner of her eye.  Perhaps he is a catch, as far as regulars go.  He certainly has an appealing little devilish side.

She almost likes him.

She’s almost happy.

“Seneschal Bran.”

Almost.

If Bran feels Serendipity’s fingers stiffen at the sound of the familiar voice, he pays no heed.  “Champion.  I’m delighted you could make it.”

“The pleasure's all mine,” Hawke replies.

He shakes the seneschal’s free hand, gripping his fingers so hard that his new-looking leather gloves creak with the pressure.  Then, he turns his gaze on Serendipity, who is still mindlessly latched onto the seneschal’s arm.

“Milady,” Hawke says.

He bows slightly at the waist. It’s such a familiar gesture in such a foreign setting and in such foreign clothes that Serendipity feels a well of anger rise up in her chest. She still manages to bite out: “Serah Hawke.”

The half-drunk bourgeois surrounding them are staring.  Bran says, “You know Mistress Hawke, Serendipity?”

Something hardens in Hawke’s eyes at the title, something not Seneschal Bran or any of the others could understand.  But Serendipity knows.

“Everyone knows the Champion of Kirkwall, Seneschal,” Serendipity declares instead of what she really wants to say.

She levels her gaze with Hawke’s for just a moment, then lets go of Seneschal Bran long enough to curtsy.  Hawke, typically, answers her courtesy with another quick bow.

“Me?” he says, in a voice as light as the tinkling of the crystal wine glasses in every hand. “I’m hardly worth knowing, milady.  I’m just a poor pauper from the streets who happens to know how to wield a knife.”

“You are far too modest, Mistress Hawke.  You may not even have been born in Kirkwall, but look where you are now.”

The onlookers festooned with ruffles and riches are gathering closer to their Champion, particularly the men.  Hawke’s gaze flicks towards Serendipity for just a moment before he turns away.

“Indeed.  Look where I am now,” he murmurs, not for the crowd’s benefit, and Serendipity can’t help but smirk.

Seneschal Bran doesn’t stay to chat with the Champion, because he has other important people to suck up to, so Serendipity lets herself be led away.

Her scuffed-up, dark-haired street rat, all grown up, gaining first mysterious riches then prestigious titles left and right.  Next, he’ll be seneschal, and later viscount.  He’d rule over Kirkwall in men’s breeches and with a smile of steel.  It’s almost enough to make her laugh.

“The Champion of Kirkwall,” she says under her breath.

Bran hears her and nods as he places one possessive hand firmly on her shoulder.  “Champion, indeed.  She certainly has the bearing for it, if not the blood.  To think that a mere Fereldan…well, her family is from Kirkwall, after all. Perhaps she is merely coming home.”

Serendipity says nothing.  She’s not paid to talk.

The party drags on.  Serendipity eats a little, flirts with Bran a lot, and tries to forget Hawke is there.  After all, ever since the night of Serendipity’s rescue from the hands of those bandits, Hawke’s visits have been few and far in between.  In brothel years, that’s a lifetime.  That’s long enough to forget someone three times over.

Except whenever she tries to let down her guard, there he is, her _belle Fereldan_ , standing under the orange candlelights with a glass of the sweetest wine in hand, with his hair pulled back in the Orlesian men’s fashion, and clad in a man’s tunic and a man’s tall, mirror-slick boots.  He looks like a dandy or a well-bred ruler’s son, standing stiffly among the rowdy, red-faced Kirkwall lords and ladies, with just the barest hint of a line between his eyes.

It’s hard to admit, but Hawke is difficult to forget.  A single lifetime might not be enough.

The floor is clearing now, and the musicians are flipping through their sheet books, and half-drunken noblefolk are pairing off excitedly.  It’s almost nine hours, and therefore time for the first official dance.  Serendipity polishes off her wine and sets the glass down on a nearby table, carefully, so that she doesn’t snap the delicate stem.

“Shall we, Seneschal?” she asks Bran.

Bran doesn’t answer her right away.  He’s standing with his arms crossed, one hand up under his chin, with his eyes staring out into the middle distance of deep political machinations.

“I have a better idea,” he says finally.  “Why don’t you go invite the Champion to dance?”

“What?”

“She’s hiding it well, but it’s obvious to me that she would like nothing more for the dance to start so she can slip away, and we can’t have that.  It’ll reflect badly on all of us if the guest of honour decides to skip out early, wouldn’t you say?”

Serendipity shrugs.  She’s not paid to have political opinions, either.

Seneschal Bran turns towards her, arms still crossed, but he’s bearing a smile that’s just edging towards devious.  “You’ll make a more than worthy distraction for our Champion, I think.  What do you say?”

“I say I’m not a parcel to be tossed around for your benefit.”

Bran smirks.  “Of course not, my dear.  You’ll be well compensated for your trouble.   _Any_ trouble you may have to go through, that is.”

He doesn’t need to say anything more.

Serendipity picks her way through the increasingly excited crowd, until she is right next to Hawke.  This is a request from tonight’s benefactor, she keeps telling herself, but her hands betray her with a minute tremble before she can place them just so, to show off the fragile curve of her wrists and the alluring slenderness of her fingers. This is merely a task, an exercise in seduction, but she feels rash and beautiful all the same, and doesn’t care who stares as she comes close.

Cunningly, she waits until she’s level with Hawke before she leans up on the tips of her toes, brings her painted lips close to his ear, and murmurs, “Hawke.”

Hawke doesn’t startle or even turn.  “Serendipity.”

“Would you like to dance?”

The music starts up, a rousing three-step piece as boisterous as a Fereldan waltz.  To their left, a knot of over-painted maidens shifts and squeals with delight.  Hawke glances only cursorily in their direction before his eyes dart over to the right, surveying the room.  Serendipity follows his gaze, and sees a middle-aged lord, far too ungainly for his fine clothes, eagerly making his way through the throng of revelers, straight in Hawke’s direction, hope and hunger shining in his beady eyes.

Hawke says, “I would love to.”

And he finally turns and looks Serendipity full in the face, and smiles his wary smile, and offers his arm.

Although there are many twittering couples standing along the edge of the dance floor, only a few are brave enough – or still possess the necessary hand-eye coordination – to take to the floor.  So they’re almost alone as they strike out, the unlikely pair, a perverse elven whore and a Champion who looks like a boy-child.

Just behind the group of giggling debutantes, the middle-aged lord stops, hopes suddenly dashed, as he sees Hawke leading Serendipity out into the centre of the hall.  One of Hawke’s gloved hands holds one of Serendipity’s delicately aloft, the other tucked neatly behind his back.  They step forward in time to the swish of the strings, holding each other’s gaze like they did that very first day, with caution and curiosity and the smallest hint of hope.

Everyone is watching.  Serendipity sees their eyes following them from one end of the floor, and feels the gazes from the other side on her back.  Well, let them stare, and fawn and pine over the Champion of Kirkwall.  He’s hers for a few moments, hers entirely.

She can be truthful with herself for these few fleeting moments, for the space of a few steps on a marble floor.  She’s been hoping to meet Hawke, or someone like him, for a very long time.

They’ve walked far enough.  Hawke releases Serendipity’s hand and stands at attention.  Serendipity stands opposite, clutching one corner of her long flowing skirt, and they bow as the ritual of dance demands.  Then it begins, the slow circling, the steps and kicks in time to the leap of the violists' bows.

They’re far away enough from the other couples for Hawke to whisper, “I missed you.”

 _Remember you’re just for hire._  “And we missed you, serah.”

Hawke shakes his head, then reaches out for Serendipity’s hand and twirls her around in time.  “You know what I mean.”

“And you know what _I_ mean,” Serendipity says harshly, though her expression is schooled into benign, lovely neutrality.

No response.  They step together, side by side, one, two, three, one, two, three.  Hawke’s arm is solid around her waist, and his silk sleeve feels crisp and new.

The melody accelerates, driven by the flutes and the stomping of the lutists’ feet.  There are more couples on the floor now but they’re still the ones taking up the most space, at the very centre where the chandelier’s light is brightest.  Serendipity’s yellow skirt swirls and shimmers around her, catching around Hawke’s legs but Hawke doesn’t get tangled for a moment, his feet are too fast for that.

Hawke has dropped the Champion-like modesty and is the street rat again, steely strong, with a grip like iron and movements silver-quick.  They pick up the pace as the strings jump and twang.  It’s hardly a traditional dance but it suits them fine, especially Hawke who treats it like a series of side-steps and parries.  This isn’t a dance but a battle, and this isn’t a partnership but a confrontation.

Serendipity realizes that she is angry.  She’s angry at Hawke and she’s angry at herself too, but mostly at Hawke, Hawke who came to her as a mere fledgling, Hawke who was able to run off and do amazing things before the city’s very eyes, Hawke who tussled and fought and bled for glory, or justice, or something else entirely.

Hawke, whose visits are scarcer and scarcer, leading up to the day when he’ll decide to never come back.

Hawke, who is just like her, the only person like her in the entire world.

Hawke, who loves her with his eyes but who will betray her in the end, just like all the others.

Serendipity hates him.

And it must show in her expression, because Hawke says, mid-step, his face close to hers, “Please don’t be angry with me.”

She’s slipping.  This was a bad idea and she knew it from the start.  “Why would I be angry?  You’re a busy little street rat, serah.  Or should I say Champion?”

Hawke makes a face one moment, smoothes it away the next.  “Don’t call me that.  Anything but that.  I’d prefer serah Hawke any day, or even mistress, though it boils my blood to hear it.”

“Serah, then.”

“You know you’re the only one who gives me that title?  For everyone else it’s mistress, mistress.  Except for my steward.  But he’s an odd one.”

“They’re all fools,” Serendipity says before she can stop herself.

Hawke makes a strange, struggling expression as he grasps Serendipity by the waist again and spins her around once, making her ample skirts fly.  The drums beat and the flutes trill insistently, and around them the onlookers are clapping their hands in time, cheering and reveling, having the merriest time.

“Help me get out of here,” Hawke implores, his steps quickening to the thrum of the music.  “It’s stifling.  I can’t stand it.”

Serendipity glances around and catches Seneschal Bran’s eye.  He’s standing right next to the dance floor like it’s a place of honour, one hand still under his chin, with a calculating grin on one half of his face.  With a small movement of one finger, he gestures towards the grand staircase at the back of the hall.  It leads up to the guest quarters of the seneschal’s estate, where the many guest bedrooms have been prepared expressly for this night.

Bran must think himself so clever, but he’s just as much a fool as the rest of them.

Hawke grips Serendipity’s hands as they kick their feet up higher.  The strings rise and dip and rise again in a frenzy, rushing towards the climax.  It feels like all eyes are on them as they swirl and glide across the floor, and Hawke isn’t letting go of her waist anymore, but is drawing her along with a sort of desperation only Serendipity can see.

Serendipity tosses her head and allows Hawke to spin her round, and easy as a key clicking into place she catches her knee at Hawke’s waist as they keep spinning, spinning, and for the space of a moment, with the strings soaring and the flutes crying out, they’re like one on the dance floor, locked together like two halves of a whole.

Then they stop, arrested by the final searing note, just before the entire hall erupts into applause.

All of the high-class awkwardness generated by Serendipity’s presence at the event is forgotten for a few moments as the guests stomp and cheer, loving their Champion, loving the decadence of it all.  They’re all swine and Serendipity curses every last one of them to an eternity in the Void, and almost wishes that she believed in the elven gods so that she could curse them with them too.

“Let’s go,” she says to Hawke, and Hawke nods quickly and takes her again by the hand.

They’re not even off the floor yet when the next song starts up, a little ballroom tune more characteristic to dour Kirkwall than the first.  More dancers are spilling in pairs onto the polished tiles to skip around in their impractical shoes.  Hawke and Serendipity have to elbow their way past the crowd.  Hawke wards away the new hopefuls with renewed charm, begging leave in favour of the wine fountain, and everyone lets him go with only a quick sly glance at his partner.

They skirt around the table holding the dazzling crystal fountain and make their way swiftly up the stairs, not bothering to look behind them.  Serendipity knows Bran is watching them but he can go hang himself for all she cares.  She feels a rush of power as she climbs the stairs faster than she’s used to, dragged along by her single-minded street rat, and she realizes that she’s doing as Hawke has asked, that she is abandoning Bran and disregarding his orders.

She should be guilt-ridden and afraid, fearful of displeasing a wealthy and important client, but she finds with a surge of fierce almost-happiness that she doesn’t care one bit. Tonight is hers. Hawke is _hers_.

Hawke is still grasping her hand as they leap up over the final step and melt into the shadows of the upper floor.  Only a few candles are burning in lonely high-up sconces, but the moon is bright and illuminates the wide hall through the windows, lighting their way as they walk, silent as thieves.

Hawke squeezes Serendipity’s fingers tightly then suddenly lets go, but it’s only to push one of the doors open.  They hurry inside and Hawke closes the door behind them in such a way that it doesn’t make a sound.

It’s a luxurious Hightown bedroom, lit by the light of a single oil lamp on the nightstand.  Reflected light glints on the myriad gold trimmings and trappings of high-class life, but Serendipity doesn’t have time to notice more than that before Hawke is upon her, one hand at her waist and the other at the nape of her neck.  His eyes gleam in the semi-darkness as he pushes Serendipity carefully back against the door, then his eyes close and he presses his mouth firmly against hers without so much as an intake of breath.

Serendipity can’t say she expected this.  She’s known Hawke several times over the years but they’ve never kissed, not like this, not on the mouth as lovers do.  And yet here they are, grasping each other in the dark, eyes closed and lips sealed together, tongues touching between gasping breaths.

It lasts a long time and when it’s done, Serendipity is breathing hard like she’s run clear across Kirkwall, and Hawke is trying not to show it but he is too.

Hawke makes a growling noise in his throat and leans forward, pressing one forearm flat against the door and hiding his face against Serendipity’s neck.  Serendipity doesn’t know what to do but wait, both hands resting uneasily on Hawke’s hips.  They’re quiet for some time, long enough for their breathing to return normal, though not long enough for Serendipity’s heartbeat to do the same.

Hawke breathes out a laugh against Serendipity’s skin.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Serendipity frowns.  “What for?”

“For this.  We can’t…Maker, I’m an idiot.”

“I don't see how.”

“This…I apologize.  It won’t…”

He trails off and begins to pull away, but Serendipity keeps his hips flush against hers with her hands.  Hawke meets her eyes at last, and as usual it’s difficult to read his face even though his body is all-telling, tense as a bow string ready to be loosed at any moment.

Serendipity thinks she should say something else, but she can’t imagine what.  So she goes for the alternative, the path of least resistance.  “There’s a bed, serah.  If you’d like, we could…”

But Hawke looks away, disappointed somehow. “No.  I…no.  That’s not what I want.”

“It’s all I can give you.”

“I know.”

Serendipity strokes one hand up Hawke’s side, feeling the rough surface of his intricately stitched leather vest, but imagining the raised battle scars underneath.

“I should go,” Hawke says quietly, his breath hot against Serendipity’s ear.

“It’d be unfair to let you go away empty-handed.”

“I’m not.”

He kisses Serendipity again, not as deeply nor as urgently, but that’s all right too, even with something like frustration rising in Serendipity’s chest.

Hawke pulls away again, slowly, and this time Serendipity lets him go, her fingers lingering, sliding off his sides as Hawke steps back.  She leans back against the door as her street rat, her grown-up Kirkwall rogue turns and strides towards the window.  Lined by silver moonlight, Hawke parts the curtain with one hand and looks cautiously down.

“Hm.  This is the north side…I can make it from here.”

“I’m sure you could, sweetie.”

Hawke draws the gauzy curtain completely aside and throws the double-paned window open.  Cool night air wafts in, scented by the last of the fragrant brown crackling plants.  Soon, it will be too cold for even that, and the garden will turn dry and grey. Serendipity gazes out the window at the sky, but it’s cloudless and an even, inky blue-black. No snow tonight, it seems.

Hawke leans over the sill for one more quick look, then twists back with one knee on the velvet-cushioned window seat.

“Come here.”

Serendipity does.  Hawke reaches out a hand to her as she approaches, draws her fingers to his lips to kiss.

“You look like a vision tonight, Serendipity.  I’m glad I came, in the end.”

“I live to serve.”

Hawke’s lips twitch at that, hearing the sarcasm but letting it go, as always.  “Please don’t begrudge me for my actions tonight.  I’ll be back to see you at the Rose soon.”

Serendipity tightens her fingers around Hawke’s and smiles.  It’s not her usual smirk, with the sharp edges, but a smile without teeth, without scorn. It’s a sad smile that pulls at her memory, something long-forgotten.

Then, inspiration, as the cooling night air breezes around them, as Hawke looks at her with uncharacteristic and fatal indecision.

“Can I go with you?” Serendipity asks.

Hawke’s fingers twitch around hers. “Go…where?”

“Outside. Away from here. I hate these people as much as you do, so let’s go.”

“Don’t you have to stay with Bran–I mean, the seneschal?”

Serendipity rolls her eyes. “The seneschal can handle himself for a while." Maker knows he makes her watch him do it often enough. "I want to go with you.”

For the first time, Hawke looks out of sorts and flustered. It would be heart-warming if Serendipity’s chest didn’t feel so tight with the stress of breaking courtesan law.

“Are you…allowed?” Hawke asks uncertainly. Damn him. “You were meant to entertain me, were you not? Won’t he be angry if you leave?”

“I said I don’t care,” Serendipity says heatedly. She frees her fingers from Hawke’s and, in his rare moment of helplessness, pushes him towards the window. “Now get out there and do your jumping thing, then help me down.”

And Hawke goes without another word, so quickly Serendipity almost doesn’t see it. There’s no trace of him at all, not even a stray fluttering of the curtains, until she hears, just barely, the quiet _thump_ of him hitting the ground. She can’t help but be impressed.

Serendipity crawls up onto the velvet window seat and leans out the window, and peers down into a drop at least as high as the balcony of the Blooming Rose. She draws back hastily with an expressive shudder and almost decides not to go, but then Hawke’s voice rises up, softly, from the dark: “Serendipity? Are you there?”

Serendipity leans out the window again, swaying as she realizes the extent of the drop for the second time. She hisses, “It’s really high up.”

Hawke makes a sound like a laugh, but smothers it quickly. “It is, a little. Can you make it? I’ll catch you.”

“You’ll drop me and I’ll break my neck.”

“I won’t. Come on now, before someone sees.”

Serendipity breathes in, deeply, slowly. And she realizes that she’s made her choice already.

Carefully, she hauls herself up onto the window sill, yellow dress and all, and stands slowly, wobbling a little though the sill is well-made and perfectly solid. With her standing up, the ground looks even farther away than it did before, and Hawke is an almost invisible silhouette in the distant dark. As she strains her eyes to see him, Hawke waves, with unusual jauntiness.

“Come on,” he says again. “Hang off the sill and drop down. I can catch you from this height.”

“Can you really?” Serendipity wonders aloud, trying for sarcasm but failing because of the distinct tremor in her voice.

But she obeys. Slowly, she crouches on the sill then slides into a sitting position, and then slides further, twisting her hips until her legs are hanging over the abyss and her trembling arms are supporting most of her teetering weight. Hawke makes a noise of encouragement and shifts down below, readying himself.

Serendipity pushes off, and falls.

To her credit, she only makes a slight sound of terror as she goes plummeting through the air, which is cut off with a _whuff_ of breath as she lands, hard, in Hawke’s arms. To his credit, Hawke stumbles and curses mightily in a way that Serendipity has never heard him do before, but he does not fall. After a panicked moment of staggering and swaying, Hawke rights himself and stands, triumphant, the fair maiden safely held up in his grasp.

“My lady,” he says pleasantly, like they’ve just crossed paths on an ordinary nighttime stroll.

“Oh, put me down,” Serendipity grunts, embarrassed.

He does. Serendipity smoothes the folds of her skirt out, looks back up at the faraway window, and says, “Nice catch.”

“Thank you,” Hawke says, and offers her his arm.

She only hesitates for a moment before taking it, then they stride off, out of the seneschal’s dying winter gardens and into the chill Kirkwall night.

=====

It doesn’t get extremely cold in Kirkwall in the wintertime, but the night air has a certain bite to it all the same, so much that Serendipity regrets not having snatched something from the cloakroom before setting out on this little adventure. The close proximity of Hawke provides a bit of warmth, at least, which is why she keeps a firm hold on his arm as they stroll through the deserted Hightown streets like lord and lady.

It’s been a while since Serendipity has been out at night. The days are shorter in winter and she doesn’t like the cold or the dark, so she’s always been certain to be safely indoors by the time the sun sets. Tonight is a transgression, a violation of that rule, a risk that thrills and thrums in the pit of her belly, like she is anticipating – what exactly?

She feels like she should be nervous but she isn’t, really. There may be bandits and scoundrels lurking just around the corner, waiting to prey on some passing noble, but for some reason Serendipity isn’t scared at all. After all, she has a stiletto in her bodice and a rogue at her side, along with a healthy dose of bravado brought on by their daring escape, so what more does she need? Something to pass the time, she supposes. Something to turn this minor adventure into a real treat.

“So where shall we go, milord?” Serendipity asks mildly, carefully keeping stride with Hawke’s long, graceful steps.

Hawke thinks for a while, his dominant hand placed very gently atop hers on his arm. Then he says, “The Hanged Man, for a start? The drink is foul and the company is often fouler, but somehow it remains more inviting to me than a night spent in the company of politicians and nobles.”

“Will your companions be there?”

“At this time of night? Some of them, at least.”

“Then let’s go.”

They reach the first set of rough-hewn stairs leading to Lowtown and begin to climb down. The sounds of drunken revelry emanating from the nearby mansions gradually fades to nothing behind them, and soon they emerge into the true heart of Kirkwall, where the commoners dwell and make their lives. A few turns in the road later and they alight before the door of the Hanged Man. Drunks loll in the surrounding passages like the permanent fixtures they are, though fewer of them wander on this cold night.

Serendipity does not let go of Hawke’s arm as he reaches out and pushes the door open to admit them, so they stride in together into warmth and music and unruly laughter, so similar and yet so unlike the atmosphere of the party they had just left. At the bar, the single barkeep doles out fetid-looking brown ale as fast as his patrons can guzzle it down, and thugs and crooks from different factions lean on the counter together like they are old friends. The many uneven tables strewn about the hall are occupied by a host of clients nearly as varied as the peoples of Thedas themselves. No elves, though. Never any elves.

Hawke seems to realize this too. He says quietly, even as some of the nearer patrons glance towards them with mild interest, “Do you want to stay?”

Serendipity glares back at the curious onlookers until they return to their tankards, then says, “Yes. Buy me a drink?”

Hawke smiles quickly, in the corner of his mouth, and Serendipity releases his arm so that he can step towards the bar. She sees him greet the barkeep and the barmaid, then one of the half-drunk patrons leaning heavily against the bar. She’s a stunningly beautiful woman, Rivaini dark, with an easy grace and tilt to her voluptuous hips that Serendipity envies, briefly, before she shuts the feeling away. She goes to join Hawke at the bar just as he is exchanging two brimming full tankards of ale for a few silver coins.

“Feels dirty, accepting coin from the Champion of Kirkwall himself,” says the barkeep with a sleazy grin, but he tucks the money away all the same.

Serendipity receives her drink from Hawke and holds it carefully in both hands, as beside her, the Rivaini woman says, “Oh, Hawke, is this her? The one who’s been keeping you up at night?”

“The very same,” answers Hawke, so easily that it doesn’t sound like a lie at all.

Serendipity and Hawke’s companion size each other up for a while over the tops of their foaming ale glasses, then the woman grins and salutes her with one perfectly steady hand, friendly as anything. “Well, well. I know you. You’re from the Blooming Rose, aren’t you?”

Serendipity says, “And you’re there so often you might as well be from it.”

Hawke hides his expression in his ale as the beautiful woman laughs heartily, exclaiming, “I like her! Just the thing to spice up your life, eh, Hawke? I am Captain Isabela,” she adds for Serendipity’s benefit. She steps away from the bar and sweeps into a grandiose bow. Hawke must have gotten it from her. “And I am very pleased to finally meet you.”

“Serendipity. And ’finally’?”

But Isabela only smiles, lovely and mysterious, and gestures meaningfully towards Hawke with a jerk of her chin before returning to her drink. Having recovered, Hawke says, “Shall we find a table?”

“Oh, go see Varric,” Isabela suggests. “He must be lonely up in his room. You’ve been so busy you haven’t been to see him in a while.”

“He has his tales to keep him company,” Hawke says, but begins to lead Serendipity to the back of the hall, where the passage narrows into a quieter hallway and a series of private rooms.

As they pick and push their way through the crowd while trying to keep as much ale as possible inside their tankards, Serendipity asks, “They treat you as a man in here?”

Hawke shrugs, smiling but not up to his eyes. “It’s a bit of a running joke.”

So Serendipity doesn’t ask any more as she follows Hawke up the short flight of stairs to the private chambers. Around the bend is a warm, well-lit, surprisingly comfortable room, in which every flat surface but the floor is layered with piles and piles of writing paper. Every single sheet is covered with a black ink scrawl, so indecipherable they may as well be in ancient runes. At the table closest to the crackling fireplace sits a busily writing dwarf, in fact the very same dwarf that Serendipity met on the night she and her compatriots were attacked by bandits and subsequently rescued by Hawke’s party.

“Working hard?” Hawke calls out as they approach.

“Aren’t I always?” the dwarf apparently named Varric grunts without looking up. “Give me a moment to finish this. It’s the details of the Arishok’s spectacular defeat at the hands of one Champion of Kirkwall.”

“I wasn’t Champion yet,” Hawke protests.

Varric grins as he continues to write. “In all but in name, my friend.”

Hawke rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue further, just pulls up a bench for Serendipity and himself and invites her to sit down. She does, and occupies herself with her peculiar drink as she tries not to feel Hawke’s presence too acutely. He’s relaxed in here, in a way that she’s rarely seen him except in the few moments following the crest of his pleasure, so he’s interesting to watch. He seems engrossed with the pages sitting on the table in front of him and after a moment, Serendipity realizes he’s reading, and with apparent ease. His gaze shifts easily from one page to the next, and he smiles and makes exasperated noises as one would while experiencing a simultaneously amusing and ridiculous tale.

A street rat who reads is as uncommon as they come, but then, Hawke’s always been full of surprises. And of course, to the discerning eye, his regal bearing and gentle manners do speak of more than a mere education on the streets.

“I seem to have missed the part of my life where I vanquished the Arishok in dramatic  single combat,” Hawke comments after a few more pages.

“It might as well have been single combat,” Varric retorts as he dips his quill in the ink.

“The rest of you were fighting with me. Against a whole horde of Qunari, I might add.”

“But you tangled with the Arishok more than the rest of us combined. Thus, singly.”

“That’s lying!”

“That’s artistic license. Now, are you going to introduce me to your lovely companion or do I have to do everything myself?”

Hawke sighs in a manner that makes it look routine, just another facet of the ritual of friendly banter. “Varric, this is Serendipity, whom I am escorting tonight. Serendipity,” Hawke says to her, “this is Varric Tethras, my good friend and forger of biographies.”

“I prefer ‘wordsmith’,” Varric says, finally laying down his quill and looking Serendipity right in the eyes. “Hello again.”

Serendipity puts down her tankard, careful to not set it down atop any of the pages, which is no easy feat considering they cover nearly the entire surface of the table. “You remember me?”

Varric smiles charmingly. “I never forget a face, Blossom. Necessary to the trade of wordsmith, you see.”

“Nicknames already?” Hawke chuckles, looking torn between amusement and the urge to chastise.

“It suits, doesn’t it? Fresh as a spring rose, she is.”

“You must be one of the few men of discernment left within this city, serah Tethras,” Serendipity says, smiling her sultry courtesan’s smile.

“Call me Varric. And I daresay I am.”

They converse in this way for many long, pleasant minutes, drinking and exchanging news and anecdotes. Every once in a while, Varric pauses to scribble something on a scrap of parchment, taking notes before inspiration flees. Hawke complains about most of the stories about himself, calling them flowery and exaggerated when they are not completely untrue, and looks utterly mortified when, at Serendipity’s urging, Varric picks up one section with a flourish and reads a few passages aloud, in a serious, dramatic voice that has Serendipity giggling and gasping like she’s at a stage play. Hawke attempts to right Varric’s literary wrongs by recounting some of his activities in his own words, but gives up after Varric interrupts for the fifth time to interject with some fantastic detail that may or may not be of his own imagining. Serendipity is tipsy and wheezing with laughter by this time, and Hawke is flushed and grinning, though whether from embarrassment or ale is difficult to tell.

“Hawke, if ever you decide to write a memoir, do the world a favour and let me write it for you,” Varric concludes at the end of this rousing discussion. “The way you talk, your personal history is doomed to be as dry as draft number fourteen of Anders’ manifesto.”

“Oh, don’t let him hear you say that,” Hawke says into his drink.

“A true wordsmith knows no censorship!”

“And a true Champion knows when not to indulge in another mug of horrible ale.” To suit action to words, Hawke sets down his empty ale tankard with finality and gets to his feet. “It’s getting a little stuffy in here, so I think we’ll go for a bit of air. If that’s all right with you,” he adds, looking to Serendipity with consideration.

She says yes, so they say their goodbyes to Varric, who kisses the back of Serendipity’s hand and calls her “Blossom” once more, with affection, and Serendipity can’t help but feel a little charmed. She goes ahead to hand the empty mugs to the barmaid passing in the hallway, but still manages to catch Varric muttering to Hawke, in an unreadable kind of voice, “So, she’s like you, huh?” She steps out into the hall so that she doesn’t hear his reply.

Hawke joins her in a moment, announcing his presence with a gentle hand at the small of her back, and they go while Hawke fields friendly jeers and farewells from the various patrons of the Hanged Man. Captain Isabela, still at the bar, waves in their general direction and winks suggestively at Serendipity, who answers her with her real smile – not the trained, saucy, come-hither smile of the courtesan house, but the sharp-edged glint of a smile that is learned from the streets by rogues and ratty orphans alike.

Isabela laughs and raises her mug of ale at them as though in blessing. Serendipity takes that as a good sign.

=====

It is truly the dead of night now. Even the drunks in the alley have rolled on to warmer places. A chill mid-winter moon hangs in the sky, bright and watchful and not quite full.

Serendipity is seriously wishing for a cloak now, but she has too much pride to mention it to Hawke. The Champion of Kirkwall looks quite at his ease, cloakless and in breeches and leather waistcoat, but then again it’s about this cold year round in Ferelden. Serendipity shivers more just thinking about it.

Hawke notices. Of course he does. He says,  “Are you cold? I’m sorry, I should have known you would be. This was a bad idea…”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Serendipity, trying not to sound like she’s clenching her teeth against the cold.

Hawke offers his arm again and she takes it readily, pressing as closely and as nonchalantly as she possibly can against his warmth. Hawke makes a sound in his throat but doesn’t otherwise comment, though he might be smiling. It’s hard to tell in the dark.

They walk for a bit, breathing in the cool air and keeping a wary eye out for scoundrels. It seems to be just cold enough to discourage any crooks from plying their sketchy trade, which is fortunate for them but sort of makes them wonder what they’re doing out in the middle of winter themselves.

“What’s it like in Ferelden?” Serendipity asks suddenly. She’s content to just walk, despite the cold, but she feels like she should say something.

Hawke looks up at the moon thoughtfully, then glances alertly sideways at the adjacent alleyways. “Hm. Cold. Covered in dirt and overrun by dogs and darkspawn.”

“That’s what everyone says about Ferelden,” Serendipity points out. “I want to know what it’s like for you.”

Hawke thinks again, longer this time. They cross the Lowtown market, where empty stalls lie dormant until the next sunrise.

“It’s home,” he says finally, gazing at the modest stall that belongs to Vincento. “Or it was. I’m not sure anymore.”

“Did you live there long?”

“I was born there. My brother and sister too. We lived there our entire lives before the Blight struck. Then we came to Kirkwall because we had nowhere to go and my mother had family here.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Have you heard of the Amell family?” Hawke asks conversationally, like he didn’t just refer to one of the wealthiest and most influential families to ever call themselves Kirkwallers. “My father’s name was Hawke and a name was all he had, but by my mother my siblings and I are all Amells in the eyes of the law. Though that didn’t seem to mean much when we first arrived,” he adds, with just a touch of bitterness. “Our uncle had gambled and drunk and Maker knows what else the entire family fortune away by the time we came along. Dear old Gamlen.”

The name means something to her. After a few steps, Serendipity remembers. “Wait…Gamlen Amell? _That_ Gamlen? The old man always hanging around the bar at the Blooming Rose and trying to feel up the madame?”

“I imagine so,” Hawke says grimly. “I see you’ve met my uncle. Charming fellow, isn’t he?”

Serendipity snorts. “In all honesty, I’d rather go with a nug than with him.”

Hawke laughs, though it’s not really funny. “Yes. Yes, I…I quite understand that. Still, he is family. One of the only family members I have left, actually. And he really isn’t so bad once you get to know him.”

That makes Serendipity feel a little mean, so she’s quiet for a while before she adds, “Still, in your mother’s and uncle’s time, your family was pretty formidable. I heard that Lord Amell was slated to become viscount at some point. But then…”

“The mage child?” Hawke supplies mildly. “Yes, I suppose one could say he was our undoing. He’s my cousin, you know. I’ve never met him, but I heard that he caused quite a stir when he and his companions brought an end to the Fifth Blight.”

“Your _cousin_ is the Hero of Ferelden?” Serendipity screeches, causing Hawke to burst into laughter again. It’s a good thing there isn’t anyone skulking about, because they would have homed in on them by now for certain.

When Hawke has laughed himself out, he says, “Quite the family, aren’t we?”

“I’ll say,” Serendipity replies. “With a legacy like that, it’s no wonder you turned out so extraordinary yourself.”

“Varric’s tales paint me as a far more interesting character than I actually am,” Hawke says modestly. “I’m really just a humble knife-twirler from a distant land.”

“Now that’s a tall tale if I’ve ever heard one.”

Hawke smiles and squeezes Serendipity’s arm briefly, easily affectionate. “You’re very kind.”

Serendipity wants to say “I’m really not” but stops herself just in time. They’re past the market now, having ascended the long staircase to the very top of the slums, where the high town meets the low. They both look back over the roofs of the sleeping Lowtown, illuminated from above by the cool blue light of the moon and the faint glowing pinpricks of the stars.

“Let’s do something fun,” Serendipity decides.

Hawke looks at her. “Fun?”

“Yeah, something strange, something daring. I want my heart to race.”

Hawke keeps looking at her, considering, then he grins suddenly and unloops his arm from hers. “All right. Follow me.”

He takes off in the direction they came from, loping down the stairs two at a time. Serendipity follows as fast as she’s able, gathering her skirts up on the way. Once at the bottom again, Hawke beckons and sets off down another alley, his steps silent and swift.

Serendipity catches up to him at the end of this alley, where three stone walls meet to form a dead end. There are crates and barrels stacked pell-mell here, like they’ve been abandoned. Serendipity sees a few cracked pots in one and what looks suspiciously like a ripped pair of trousers in another. She’s about to ask what in the Void they could be doing here when Hawke turns, pulls off his long new leather gloves, and pushes them into Serendipity’s hands.

“Here,” he says excitedly, “put them on.”

Serendipity takes them automatically, staring at him in confusion. “Um, all right. But what about you?”

Hawke has turned again and is looking up the rough flat surface of the wall, calculating. “I climb better without them.”

“Climb–?”

“Oh, and this.”

He bounds forward and digs in the trash for a moment, as Serendipity pulls on his gloves and watches him bewilderedly. When he returns, he’s slipping away the small knife Serendipity didn’t see him take out and is brandishing a long strip of fabric cut from the discarded trousers. He bends as though to tie it around her leg, then stands again hurriedly, looking briefly flustered, and opts for handing it to her instead.

“This is for your gown,” he explains. “Tie it up so it doesn’t get in the way of your movements.”

Serendipity does, in the way that she’s learned to do when they’re doing a washing and cleaning day at the Rose. Hawke nods, satisfied, and heads for the wall again.

“Are you going to tell me what we’re about to do?” Serendipity asks.

Hawke smiles at her over his shoulder, handsome as a lord. “Something fun.”

He takes a short run and jump off the tops of the crates piled against the wall and, swift as a shadow, somehow manages to scale the featureless surface high enough to hook his fingers on the edge. Serendipity suppresses a gasp of wonder as he pulls himself up and over like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He disappears for a moment over the edge of the roof, and when he reappears he’s but a silhouette against the blue-black sky.

“Come on!” Hawke says for the third time that night, sounding as excited as a child at a parade.

Serendipity walks cautiously up to the wall and peers upwards, gesturing sarcastically. “Okay, well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not part spider monkey, so…”

Hawke laughs. “Just climb up onto the crates and I’ll pull you up.”

By now, Serendipity knows better than to ask if he’s really capable of it, so she just does as he asks. She hauls herself over crate after crate, some of which quiver dangerously under her weight, but eventually she reaches the highest point unharmed, and looks up. Hawke is leaning over the edge, extending his right hand out to her encouragingly.

“Something fun,” Serendipity mutters, and reaches up to snatch his hand into hers.

With a grunt of effort, he begins to pull her straight up the wall. As her feet lift off the top of the crate, she scrabbles against the wall for whatever meagre purchase it can offer, her other arm reaching up for the edge as Hawke lifts her slowly, slowly up.

Hawke shifts his feet on the roof with a scratch of leather soles on gritty stone and Serendipity feels herself move up faster. With her free arm, she stretches out frantically and by some miracle manages to latch her fingertips on the very edge. There’s a protracted moment where they’re suspended there and Serendipity thinks they might fall, but then Hawke makes one last effort and yanks her up to just the right height for her to get a good grip on the roof and for him to get one arm under hers. The next thing she knows, Hawke is pulling her bodily up from out of the void and she’s clambering up onto solid ground. Hawke releases her once she’s properly up and sighs with relief. Serendipity sits on the rooftop for a while so that her heart rate can return to normal.

“I never want to do that again,” Serendipity declares heatedly, brushing rock dust from her bound and wrinkled skirts.

Hawke offers both hands to her and helps her to her feet. “Don’t worry, the rest is easy.”

He sweeps one arm out to show her. All the way to the harbour and back is nothing but rows and rows of houses and buildings, their flat stone and thatch roofs packed close together like stepping stones. Before Serendipity can quite grasp what he means, Hawke is off like a shot, sidestepping chimney stacks and leaping over the short gaps between houses. Serendipity checks her skirts and then follows his lead. She picks her way carefully at first, obviously avoiding the thatched areas so that she doesn’t risk crashing through into someone’s house, but soon she’s running just like him, jumping experimentally over cracks and venting holes like it’s a playground game. Hawke encourages her so she gets more daring and tries to leap the narrow gaps, but soon she’s careening across every gap, right at his side. Their feet hit the thick stone roofs in time and their voices ring out in child-like laughter as they run and run and run, leaving all the responsibilities and woes of champion and courtesan far behind.

When they reach the edge of the line of roofs, they rest and look out over the harbour, sitting on a warehouse roof with their legs dangling over the edge. The bay is uncommonly beautiful tonight, even with the lingering scent of the foundries in the crisp winter air. The moon’s reflection ripples in the dark water, and unseen waves slap placidly against the sides of the ships moored in the port. A drunk wanders in the street below them but otherwise the city is still and quiet in a way that it rarely is, and Serendipity catches herself thinking Kirkwall might not be all bad after all.

She rearranges her mussed bunch of skirts around her thighs for something to do with her hands, but she doesn’t really feel like breaking the silence. It’s comfortable, just sitting here by Hawke’s side and gazing out into the sea. His hand resting on the edge of the roof is close to hers and that’s all right too, she could grasp it if she wanted to but right now she’s okay. This moment in time is a perfect moment, and she wishes it could extend into forever, but wishing is just wishing and all things end. This, she knows.

But somehow, sitting here with a princely rogue and in her probably ruined party dress, Serendipity finds that she doesn’t mind that this moment will soon end. She’s used to envy, and bitterness, and the misery of wanting too much. She knows what it’s like to be rejected by her own people, to starve on the streets, to be cast from one Void into another without reprieve. What’s new is this, this ecstasy of being alive, this peace of knowing that not everything in the world is totally bad.

She’s not used to being happy. She thinks she must have felt it with Citrine, a little, and with her mother. But it’s been difficult finding happiness on her own.

She looks at Hawke, who is looking out over the water with distant, thoughtful eyes, and wonders if he has felt the same thing.

She discards the thought and leans back on her hands, kicking her feet idly, and feels a crackle of paper in her bodice. She remembers what is there.

“Hawke,” Serendipity says. “You can read, right?”

Hawke glances at her. “Yes. My mother taught us how, though we didn’t have much to read at the time.”

“Then can you read this?”

Serendipity slips her fingers into one of the hidden folds of the beaded bodice and pulls out Citrine’s letter, which she has been carrying around like a talisman since finding it weeks ago. It’s even more crumpled and scrappy than it was when she first received it, but unfolding it, she finds the scribbled words are still legible. She passes the note to Hawke, who peruses it by the light of the moon.

“It’s a letter to you,” he says after a moment. “It looks personal. Are you certain you’re all right with me reading this?”

“As if I can read it myself. I didn’t have a noble mother to teach me how, you know.”

“Of course,” says Hawke apologetically. “Erm, I’ll read it to you, then.”

Serendipity listens:

_Serendipity_

_I am sorry to leave so suddenly but since I lost Finian I can think of nothing but returning home with whatever I have left. I made a promise on my mother’s grave that I would come home when I had found my brother. I have an aunt and uncle in the same village and if they are still alive then I am sure they will help me get my mother’s trade going again._

_I wish you would come with me but I am afraid you would be unhappy out in the country. As you said to me one time it is easy for me to get things with my beauty but for you it is not so easy because people are often unkind towards people they do not understand. I am happy that I have tried to understand you because you are now my dearest friend which is why I am choosing to leave you here where you can more easily find your happiness._

_Please do not be angry with me because I love you and I hope that you can be happy one day. If you ever want to get out of Kirkwall please come visit me in Orien the farming village east of Val Royeaux. The stone I am leaving you is called rose quartz and it is yours because it makes me think of you._

_Citrine_

Hawke struggles with the cadence of Citrine’s long sentences and her child-like turns of phrase, but the message gets across clearly enough. When he finishes reading, he folds the letter up with care and respectfully hands it back to Serendipity, who takes it and tucks it back in the folds of her dress.

They’re both silent for a long time. The moon continues to shine and the waves continue to drift back and forth. Serendipity wonders if Citrine ever made it back to her village, and if so, what life she has managed to build.

At length, Hawke says, “She was your friend?”

Serendipity sighs. “Yes. She was stupid to the end but she was very kind. She deserved more than this place.”

“One could argue that you do too.”

“Could one?” Serendipity scoffs. “She didn’t even think I could survive the countryside. Well, I might not be fit to work on a farm but anything is preferable to this cesspit.”

“Then will you go after her?”

Serendipity thinks she is about to say yes, but after a moment she knows that isn’t true. She may be a bitter perverse slums elf who dreams of better things, but she knows her limits. And Kirkwall is all she’s ever known.

She can’t fool herself. The only way she'll leave this city is when her soul leaves her mortal body, at the end of her life.

Hawke is looking at her with a worried expression just visible in the dim moonlight.

“What is it?” Serendipity asks him wearily.

He looks quickly away as though embarrassed, but looks back again. “I was just thinking. I have important business in Kirkwall still, but when it’s done…I could help you.”

Warily, Serendipity says, “Help me with what?”

“To get to Orlais. To find her. Do you want that?”

Serendipity thinks about it. She says, “It will cost money. I don’t even have the coin to pay my way, let alone food and shelter.”

Hawke shakes his head. “Money is no object. I have plenty left over from the expedition. It won’t cost you a thing.”

“I won’t accept your charity,” Serendipity snarls, startling Hawke who goes rigid with tense surprise. “Contrary to what you might think, serah, I don’t need to be rescued or coddled. I can find my own way.”

“I know that,” Hawke says quietly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

He trails off uncomfortably and looks away again. He laces his fingers together and sets them on his lap, gazing out over the harbour, and sighs. Serendipity pulls her knees up to her chest, her heels on the edge of the roof, and sulks, annoyed that the comfortable familiarity between them has been chased away. She berates herself for snapping at him but can’t bring herself to apologize. It’s just that she had already fallen once into the trap of thinking coin could solve anything, and being reminded that it doesn’t is just another blow.

But Hawke looks miserable and he did mean well, so Serendipity allows herself to soften. She makes an exasperated sound and unfolds herself from her protective pose, then reaches out and places her hand on top of Hawke’s threaded fingers. He unlaces them and touches the palm of her hand, tentatively.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I know what it’s like to be poor and prideful. I suppose I let the good life go to my head.”

“I rather think you did,” Serendipity agrees. “So, can we go anywhere else from the roofs or do we have to go down?”

Hawke smiles carefully. “We can go back to Hightown.”

“We can?”

“Yes. It’s a bit of a climb, but if you take the right path, it’s very possible.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“It’s quite a ways,” Hawke warns her, “and, like I said, there’s more climbing involved. Not as high as the wall we scaled to get here, but…”

“It’s fine,” Serendipity assures him. “I can take it.”

Hawke hesitates, then he nods and pushes himself to his feet. Serendipity bunches her dress up in her hands and stands too, not even bothering to clean the roof grit from the fabric.

They go. There’s still a bit of night ahead.

=====

They’re breathless and laughing again by the time they cross Hightown. Hawke wasn’t lying; it was a bit of a climb but in Serendipity’s mind it was worth it, if only for the surprised scream that the Comte de Launcet let out when they thundered across his balcony roof.

However, as its name indicates, Hightown is higher than Lowtown and thus the rooftops suffer all the more wind for it, and at this time of night at this point in the season, those winds are enough to pierce through the warmth of exercise. By the time Hawke leads her to a wide stone terrace attached to one of the oldest mansions, Serendipity is chilled to the bone, right down to her chattering teeth. Still, she has enough presence of mind left to notice where they are.

“This is the Amell estate,” she says, as she prepares to slide off the edge of the roof into Hawke’s arms.

Hawke eases her down from the roof and sets her safely on the floor of the terrace with just a bit of effort. “It’s the Hawke estate now. Would you like to come in for a moment? It’s terribly cold.”

“Why thank you, kind serah,” Serendipity says grandly, and lets Hawke sweep her into the building.

It’s the master bedroom. There’s a healthy fire going in the massive stone fireplace, and the walls are lined with cabinets and tables in rich dark woods. The enormous four poster bed is the centrepiece, a sumptuous and elegantly draped thing such as Serendipity has never seen in her entire life.

“Must be nice coming into riches,” she remarks lightly, just to see Hawke’s expression twitch self-consciously.

“It was all here when I bought back the place,” he murmurs. “It’s much more lavish than what I’m used to, but it made Mother happy.”

“You don’t need to act like a chastised schoolboy, I was only teasing.”

Hawke clears his throat. “If you’re hungry, we can get something to eat from the kitchens. I’m no cook but I can try…”

Serendipity decides. As Hawke is talking, she goes to him and stops him with two fingers pressed to his lips. He falls silent and looks at her, hazel eyes bronzed in the firelight, not steely but liquid and warm, a soft look that’s new, as well.

Serendipity lowers her hand and peels off Hawke’s gloves, which she had been wearing all this time, and lets them fall to the floor. Then she presses one hand against the centre of Hawke’s chest and pushes him back, back, until he hits the bed with the backs of his knees and stumbles and sits heavily down on the edge of the mattress. Serendipity climbs up onto his lap, her knees spread, and kisses him hard.

For the space of a second, he is too stunned to react, but as usual he recovers quickly and returns her affections in kind. His mouth is soft and pliant under hers and his hands soon wander at their ease, first to her shoulders and back, then to her waist and hips. He tugs at the strip of cloth binding her gown around her legs but can’t work it free, so Serendipity breaks the kiss, clucking at him impatiently so that he laughs, and tears the dress free herself. The scrap of fabric then the bodice and the skirts go off in a moment, and once she’s in her underdress she starts to work on Hawke’s expensive clothes, the new leather and silk that still smells faintly of the market stall where they were purchased.

Hawke places his hands on hers and stops them, forcing her to look up. His expression is concerned, though the very dark centres of his eyes are blown wide with desire. He looks as torn as she’s ever seen him.

“It’s all right,” Serendipity tells him. She leans up to kiss him, gently, on the lips, and runs a hand through his dark wind-mussed hair. “I’m not doing this as a courtesan.”

“You’re under no obligation–”

“I know that. Do you want me?”

Hawke looks her right in the eyes. Slowly, he nods, yes.

“Then have me,” Serendipity says, and strips his unfastened waistcoat from his body.

After that, it goes quickly. Hawke no longer hesitates, but divests himself of his clothes on his own and crawls back onto the bed, watching Serendipity with avid eyes. She wastes no time in undressing completely and chasing him to the headboard, where he leans back and beckons her to him. She goes. There’s no hurry but somehow she feels tense, wrought with an edginess that has nothing to do with betraying Bran or the courtesan code anymore. It increases as she draws near to Hawke until she’s almost embracing him, her hands on his knees, on his arms, on his shoulders. Somehow he is able to level her gaze with his, unembarrassed and unafraid. Serendipity wishes she felt the way he looks.

Close to his ear, she murmurs, “No more hidden knives?”

“Nowhere to hide them,” Hawke whispers back, and kisses her on the neck and shoulder, where her body is sharpest.

Serendipity shivers, expecting disgust, but it’s good, this feeling. Hawke’s lips are good and so are his hands that smooth over her skin, caressing her like the hands of a well-known lover. Well, perhaps, in a way, he is.

“Maker, you’re lovely,” Hawke says, as he rolls her carefully under him.

“Maker, you’re here,” Hawke says, as he trails kisses down her body.

“Oh, do shut up,” Serendipity says, so that he laughs, gently, and does.

=====

It is almost dawn when Serendipity awakens. She is warm and drowsy and does not feel like moving at all.

Beside her, Hawke slumbers more deeply than she’s ever seen him do. He lies in an undefensive heap, his arms under the pillow, looking comfortable and warm and very young. Serendipity reaches out slowly to move a strand of black hair out of his face, and wonders how old he is really is. She’s never bothered to ask.

Serendipity turns her head to look out the high window, where the frail winter light is growing brighter by the minute. She thinks of Seneschal Bran, left to his own devices for the entire night, and who must be fuming by now. She feels a bit of fear but mostly she doesn’t care, because this journey was worth it and if she falls out of Bran's favour and is dismissed, it’ll be more his loss than hers.

Still, she can’t linger here for much longer. She took a big risk tonight but only because she knows the limits of what she can get away with. And those limits are shortening with every additional moment she spends in the Champion’s bed.

Serendipity shifts through the covers carefully until she reaches the edge of the bed, but it’s for naught seeing as Hawke stirs the moment she lifts them to extricate herself. She expects him to mumble sleepily or some other nonsense but he doesn’t, because he’s wide awake and watching her attentively, with only the messiness of his unbound hair and his state of undress to indicate how deeply he’d been sleeping just moments ago.

“You’re leaving,” Hawke says. It’s not a question.

Serendipity nods and slides to the floor. It’s cold. She skirts around the corner of the bed to find her dress.

Hawke doesn’t say anything. He sits up, the luxurious feather duvet over his knees. He stretches out one arm to flex his wrist and fingers as though they ache. Serendipity glances wistfully at that hand then turns away to pull her underdress on and to struggle into her skirts. She’s still a little hazy from sleep and pleasure so her fingers don’t seem to work right. She fails utterly at doing up her bodice, and as she’s cursing herself aloud Hawke lets out a breath of fond exasperation and gestures her towards him.

She goes around to his side of the bed and turns her back so that he can do up the laces for her. He works deftly, and when he’s done he presses a kiss to her exposed shoulder and then pulls the sleeves up to cover the spot.

Against the skin of her nape, he murmurs, “This is not going to happen again, is it?”

Serendipity honestly can’t say. Tonight was made possible through a series of favourable circumstances, and she is already leaving to suffer the consequences of seizing them for her own gains.

Hawke isn’t stupid. He knows all this as well as her.

He pulls away, leaving her skin cold. She can already feel his absence even as she turns to look at him. His gaze is very steady and very sad.

It strikes Serendipity that tonight is the first time she’s ever been able to read Hawke’s thoughts from his face. He can do nothing to suppress his body language but his face has always been inscrutable, a mask of blank politeness designed to keep others at bay. She sees his true face tonight because he lets her. The hazel eyes crinkle at the corners and the chapped lips curve into a slow, sad smile just for her.

To think, that someone could act, and emote, and be, just for her. It seems so impossible.

“I’ll escort you downstairs,” Hawke says.

“You’re naked,” Serendipity says.

“I can put on clothes.”

“Don’t bother,” Serendipity says, then pauses, and amends, “It’s all right. I can find my own way out.”

For a moment, Hawke looks like he is about to argue, but then he just sighs and runs a hand through his hair. Downstairs, someone awakens and begins to move around the house. A dog barks once, in greeting, then is silent.

“You have a dog,” Serendipity says flatly.

Hawke laughs. “He’s friendly. His name is Dorian."

Serendipity adjusts the ribbons on her sleeves, trying to distract herself from Hawke's touch and expression. "Unusual name for a dog."

"Carver's idea. My brother. It's the name of our cousin."

"The heroic one?"

Hawke smiles. He reaches out and carefully takes one of her fussing hands in his, and brings the back of her hand to his lips. Normally, she would pull away as soon as politeness allowed – it's not the first time men have done her this silly courtesy – but for Hawke she does not.

She can feel Hawke's weapon calluses on her skin. It's so like yet so unlike the night they've just spent that she's not sure how to feel.

"I should go," Serendipity murmurs.

"You should," Hawke agrees, barely audible.

She goes. There is no final kiss, no endless farewell.

They both know the price to pay. They've already begun to pay it.

Downstairs, a massive dog lies comfortably in front of the sitting room fire. It raises its boxy head as she passes, but doesn't respond other than to give the mangy hem of her gown a cursory sniff. Perhaps it smells enough of its master for it to deem her a friend.

She crosses paths with a richly-dressed dwarf on her way out. He startles as he sees her and glances up the stone staircase leading to the bedrooms, then looks slyly back at her. Serendipity doesn't say anything, only curtsies and leaves hurriedly, through a wide, lavish, empty hall.

=====

The party-goers have long since dispersed when Serendipity arrives back at the seneschal's estate. A few sumptuous winter cloaks hang, forgotten and abandoned, in the cloakroom, and are probably worth more than what Seneschal Bran is paying her for her services tonight. If he condescends to pay her at all, after her little escapade.

Bran himself is up despite the early hour, still drinking, no less. He holds one of his crystal family heirloom glasses delicately aloft as he supervises the cleaning-up of the main hall, sipping the red wine from it whenever a haggard servant makes a particularly strenuous movement.

Serendipity crosses the hall to meet him. He doesn't deign to look at her until she's right next to him.

Bran glances at her, takes another tiny sip, and looks away. "You've ruined your lovely gown, my dear."

"I had a bit of an adventure," Serendipity says. She's in so much trouble that she might as well be honest about the whole thing.

"An adventure, indeed. And was this flight of fancy your idea or the Champion's?"

"You did tell me to keep the Champion entertained. So I did."

Bran puts the wine glass down on the closest table, a bit too carefully for it to be completely casual. When he turns to face her, his expression is sharp and calculating and just slightly mean.

"No," he says. "I told you to keep her here. Here," he repeats, in a harder voice, "at the estate, so that my guests would not suddenly find themselves bereft of their Champion in the middle of the night, where they are at their drunkest and most desperate for the comfort of a saviour."

Serendipity doesn't respond, merely holds Bran's gaze as levelly as she can. Bran glares at her. He's angrier than she's ever seen him and for a moment, Serendipity thinks he might strike her, but when he eventually does move, it's only to retrieve his wine glass from the table.

"Come," he says to her, and turns to go up the stairs.

She follows. She knows where she's about to go.

The master bedroom is cold, the window having been left open a crack by a distracted maid. Bran shuts the window with an impatient shove and takes a pull of his wine, then sets the glass down on top of the dresser and beckons Serendipity to him.

She services him. The chill of the early morning and the severity of Bran's demeanor have made her hands steady again, so she does her job and she does it well, as always. Bran is rougher than usual, more demanding, but he doesn't hurt her even when he twists his fingers in her hair, so that's all right. He isn't all that angry after all.

He doesn't undress himself, nor does he ask her to take off her clothes, which is just as well because Serendipity really does not feel like being naked right now. She still remembers Hawke's gentle touch on her body, so vividly that it sends chills down her spine, and she's almost afraid that the imprint of his hands will be visible on her skin.

That's ridiculous, of course. No one can see. No one must see.

Bran lounges on his still-made bed, polishing off the last of his expensive wine. Serendipity sits daintily curled at his side, doting on him like she knows he likes to be doted on.

"You're very kind," he says to her, as she strokes his hair, the short red strands bristly and pokey under her palm.

She has the urge to grab a fistful of his hair and to slam his face against the solid oak headboard. Instead, she smiles, and asks if he wants more wine.

=====

When Serendipity returns to the Blooming Rose, it is well past sunrise, and the brothel's cogs have already been put into motion. Not all of the girls and boys are primping for a day of entertaining and tumbling, however; it's a cleaning day, and while they can't realistically close the whole house for an entire day, most of them are running around tossing scrubbing sponges and dirty clothes at each other instead of working the floor. Usually it's a time of merriment and fun, a bonding experience for all those equally soiled by the dirt and dust of the world, but Serendipity isn't feeling it today, so she pushes her way silently through the crowd, straight towards her bunk, where she will nap for a few hours before she is expected to help out like all the rest.

She cleans her face and hands carefully, making sure to get all the rooftop grit out from under her nails, then she climbs into bed and curls up to sleep. The steady background noise of the busy, boisterous Rose fades, gradually, as she drifts off. Far away, there is a jangle of kitchenware, the crash of fumbled crockery, and a distant peal of teasing but good-natured laughter. The sounds remind her of the party, the fancy, formal, political party that seems ages past already, although in reality she really just left it.

Something niggles at her, under her shoulder blade that is pressed against the mattress. She rolls to free it, and shoves her hand under the mattress to draw it out. It's the battered leather pouch left to her by Citrine, now even more worn from spending the long nights being ground between her body and the hard wooden frame of the bunk. She's touched and gazed at the pouch many times, but she only now notices the small bit of stitching by the edge of the row of beads: an ungainly C in coarse black thread. She recognizes the character from the signature at the bottom of the letter, and is inexplicably moved.

Serendipity glances over the edge of the bunk to make sure no one is watching her, then she tugs open the pouch and flips it over to let its contents drop into her hand. The single stone that she had once taken for a pebble looks just the same as before, but when she holds it up above her head to catch the early morning sunlight slanting in from the high, narrow window, she can just see the glimmer of pink on the stone's smoothest edge.

_The stone I am leaving you is called rose quartz and it is yours because it makes me think of you._

"A rose," Serendipity murmurs, staring at the faint touch of colour on the stone in her hand, and she can just imagine Citrine smiling back at her, radiant and beautiful and so kind, and agreeing, "A rose."

Then, Serendipity sleeps. There's a lot of work to be done today. For one thing, she needs to clean and repair Porfiria's dress.

=====

Winter passes once more, with the slow, steady pace of the melting southern snows.

There are more festivals, more parties, more balls. It's a little pointless but it's fun too, it passes the time. And Serendipity has nothing but time, these days.

During her free moments, she tries to relearn her mother's trade. She starts with cheap hemp from the Lowtown market, and befriends the sweet, chatty Antivans so that they can teach her to twist and weave it into braids to make bracelets and cute, rustic children's purses. She picks up a little of the Antivan language on the way, and although her new friends giggle at her when she mispronounces syllables or confuses the meaning of a word, it appears she has a knack.

She wonders if she could learn Orlesian. She wonders if she could learn to read.

It feels strange, to be setting these little goals for herself, when before she would not even bother. It appears she has thawed as winter thaws, slowly, in drifts that warm and melt away in the sun, leaving cool, precious water behind.

She meets someone from the alienage, late one afternoon, who knows her: a young elven girl with black blood writing drawn on her fine, pointed features. Serendipity gazes at the delicate curve of her jaw in momentary envy, and the girl, misunderstanding, or perhaps understanding completely, says cheerfully: "Oh, do you like them? It's still so strange for me to meet elves without _vallaslin_ , even though I've been living here for years now! Have you seen Hawke lately? Well, we've been ever so busy these days, it's no wonder you haven't…"

Serendipity feels like this person should be annoying to her but she isn't, somehow. Perhaps she reminds her of someone else. In any case, she's friendly and sweet and a little bit mysterious, so Serendipity is fine with being friends. She thinks she could stand to have friends, maybe.

For the first time in a long while, existence is fine. Just living like this, at a steady pace, is perfectly fine.

=====

At the end of spring, Seneschal Bran approaches her again.

"I'm to attend Duke Prosper's next party, at Château Haine." His accent is atrocious; Serendipity almost says, 'Say it _comme un Orlésienne_.' "I could go alone, but such things do get rather dull at times, especially considering this season's guest list. So would you do me the honour of accompanying me, and livening up the place?"

Serendipity was not aware that her presence entailed any sort of honour any more, but Bran was giving her a very specific expression – not closed, dark, and machinating, but expectant and a little bit lewd – so Serendipity figures she's forgiven and makes a show of considering his offer, just so she's not making it too easy for him.

After a pause, Bran readjusts himself on the pillows and says, in a slightly smug, deniably triumphant voice, "The Champion is also invited."

She still makes him wait a bit for the answer, so that he doesn't see that he's won.

Hawke has not been to see her since the winter ball.

=====

As Bran predicted, Duke Prosper's party is boring.

But Hawke apparently slew a wyvern, so that's something.

He looks older, more steady, more worn. He doesn't flinch any more when the guests call him "she" or "Mistress". At that, Serendipity feels a little proud, but a little sad too, like a battle has been lost.

In the sea of Orlesian fashions and fashion look-alikes, Hawke blends in to near-perfection in expensive, noble hunting gear, but upon closer inspection it's clear his boots are of Fereldan make, with their plain edges and thick, practical soles, and perhaps that's a battle won.

"We meet again, Champion," Serendipity says, her hand in the crook of Bran's elbow.

"So we do," Hawke says, with a bow that makes her elven companion, a stranger, raise her brows.

Hawke is busy, as Serendipity suspected he must be, for Hawke never attends parties just because he wants to. So, she is rather flattered when he manages to find her during an off moment, a transitory moment when the guests are moving from one hors-d'oeuvres plate to another, and steals a piece of time just for them, just enough for a kiss behind a château wall.

"Hawke," Serendipity breathes against his lips.

"Nat," Hawke corrects her, in his low voice made lower with the thrill of closeness.

And Serendipity kisses him back, her arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, and feels a little like she's won a battle herself.

**The End**


End file.
